[android] Android Endless List

I know its an old question and the Android world has mostly moved on to RecyclerViews, but for anyone interested, you may find this library very interesting.

It uses the BaseAdapter used with the ListView to detect when the list has been scrolled to the last item or when it is being scrolled away from the last item.

It comes with an example project(barely 100 lines of Activity code) that can be used to quickly understand how it works.

Simple usage:

class Boy{

private String name;
private double height;
private int age;
//Other code

}

An adapter to hold Boy objects would look like:

public class BoysAdapter extends EndlessAdapter<Boy>{




        ViewHolder holder = null;


        if (convertView == null) {
            LayoutInflater inflater = LayoutInflater.from(parent
                    .getContext());

            holder = new ViewHolder();

            convertView = inflater.inflate(
                    R.layout.list_cell, parent, false);


            holder.nameView = convertView.findViewById(R.id.cell);

            // minimize the default image.
            convertView.setTag(holder);
        } else {
            holder = (ViewHolder) convertView.getTag();
        }

        Boy boy = getItem(position);

        try {
            holder.nameView.setText(boy.getName());

            ///Other data rendering codes.

        } catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }

        return super.getView(position,convertView,parent);

}

Notice how the BoysAdapter's getView method returns a call to the EndlessAdapter superclass's getView method. This is 100% essential.

Now to create the adapter, do:

   adapter = new ModelAdapter() {
            @Override
            public void onScrollToBottom(int bottomIndex, boolean moreItemsCouldBeAvailable) {

                if (moreItemsCouldBeAvailable) { 
                    makeYourServerCallForMoreItems();
                } else {
                    if (loadMore.getVisibility() != View.VISIBLE) {
                        loadMore.setVisibility(View.VISIBLE);
                    }
                }
            }

            @Override
            public void onScrollAwayFromBottom(int currentIndex) { 
                loadMore.setVisibility(View.GONE);
            }

            @Override
            public void onFinishedLoading(boolean moreItemsReceived) { 
                if (!moreItemsReceived) {
                    loadMore.setVisibility(View.VISIBLE);
                }
            }
        };

The loadMore item is a button or other ui element that may be clicked to fetch more data from the url. When placed as described in the code, the adapter knows exactly when to show that button and when to disable it. Just create the button in your xml and place it as shown in the adapter code above.

Enjoy.