RecyclerView vs ListView

Question

From android developer  Creating Lists and Cards       The RecyclerView widget is a more advanced and flexible version of   ListView    Okay  it sounds cool  but when I saw this example picture  I got really confused about the difference between these two      The picture above can be easily created by ListView using custom adapter   So  in what situation should one use RecyclerView

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There are many differences between ListView and RecyclerView  but you should be aware of the following in particular    The ViewHolder pattern is entirely optional in ListView  but it   s baked into RecyclerView  ListView only supports vertical scrolling  but RecyclerView isn   t limited to vertically scrolling lists

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RecyclerView info  The RecyclerView was introduced with Android 5 0  Lollipop   it is included in the Support Library  Thus  it is compatible with Android API Level 7   Similarly to the ListView  RecyclerView   s main idea is to provide listing functionality in a performance friendly manner  The    Recycler    part of this view   s name is not there by coincidence  The RecyclerView can actually recycle the items with which it   s currently working  The recycling process is done thanks to a pattern called View Holder   Pros  amp  Cons of RecyclerView   Pros    integrated animations for adding  updating and removing items enforces the recycling of views by using the ViewHolder pattern supports both grids and lists supports vertical and horizontal scrolling can be used together with DiffUtil   Cons    adds complexity no OnItemClickListener   ListView info  The ListView has been around since the very beginning of Android  It was available even in API Level 1 and it has the same purpose as the RecyclerView    The usage of the ListView is actually really simple  In this aspect  it   s not like its successor  The learning curve is smoother than the one for the RecyclerView  Thus  it is easier to grasp  We don   t have to deal with things like the LayoutManager  ItemAnimator or DiffUtil   Pros  amp  Cons of ListView  Pros    simple usage default adapters available OnItemClickListener it   s the foundation of the ExpandableListView   Cons    doesn   t embrace the usage of the ViewHolder pattern

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Simple answer  You should use RecyclerView in a situation where you want to show a lot of items  and the number of them is dynamic  ListView should only be used when the number of items is always the same and is limited to the screen size    You find it harder because you are thinking just with the Android library in mind    Today there exists a lot of options that help you build your own adapters  making it easy to build lists and grids of dynamic items that you can pick  reorder  use animation  dividers  add footers  headers  etc  etc    Don t get scared and give a try to RecyclerView  you can starting to love it making a list of 100 items downloaded from the web  like facebook news  in a ListView and a RecyclerView  you will see the difference in the UX  user experience  when you try to scroll  probably the test app will stop before you can even do it   I recommend you to check this two libraries for making easy adapters   FastAdapter by mikepenz  FlexibleAdapter by davideas

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Following are few key points differences between RecyclerView  amp  ListView  Take your call wisely      If ListView works for you  there is no reason to migrate  If you are   writing a new UI  you might be better off with RecyclerView       RecylerView has inbuilt ViewHolder  doesn t need to implement our own   like in listView  It support notify at particular index as well      Things like animating the addition or removal of items are already   implemented in the RecyclerView without you having to do anything      We can associate a layout manager with a RecyclerView  this can be   used for getting random views in recycleview while this was limitation   in ListView In a ListView  the only type of view available is the   vertical ListView  There is no official way to even implement a   horizontal ListView  Now using a RecyclerView  we can have a      i  LinearLayoutManager - which supports both vertical and horizontal   lists  ii  StaggeredLayoutManager - which supports Pinterest like   staggered lists  iii  GridLayoutManager - which supports displaying   grids as seen in Gallery apps       And the best thing is that we can do all these dynamically as we want

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The RecyclerView is a new ViewGroup that is prepared to render any   adapter-based view in a similar way  It is supossed to be the   successor of ListView and GridView  and it can be found in the   latest support-v7 version  The RecyclerView has been developed   with extensibility in mind  so it is possible to create any kind of   layout you can think of  but not without a little pain-in-the-ass   dose    Answer taken from Antonio leiva   compile  com android support recyclerview-v7 27 0 0    RecyclerView is indeed a powerful view than ListView   For more details you can visit This page

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You can use an interface to provide a click listener  I use this technique with ListViews  too  No divider  Simply add in your row a View with a width of match parent and a height of 1dp and give it a background color  Simply use a StateList selector for the row background  addHeaderView can be avoided in ListViews  too  simply put the Header outside the View    So  if efficiency is your concern  then yes  it s a good idea to replace a ListView with a RecyclerView

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RecyclerView was created as a ListView improvement  so yes  you can create an attached list with ListView control  but using RecyclerView is easier as it     Reuses cells while scrolling up down  - this is possible with implementing View Holder in the ListView adapter  but it was an optional thing  while in the RecycleView it s the default way of writing adapter  Decouples list from its container - so you can put list items easily at run time in the different containers  linearLayout  gridLayout  with setting LayoutManager    Example   mRecyclerView    RecyclerView  findViewById R id my recycler view   mRecyclerView setLayoutManager new LinearLayoutManager this      or mRecyclerView setLayoutManager new GridLayoutManager this  2       Animates common list actions - Animations are decoupled and delegated to ItemAnimator     There is more about RecyclerView  but I think these points are the main ones   So  to conclude  RecyclerView is a more flexible control for handling  list data  that follows patterns of delegation of concerns and leaves for itself only one task - recycling items

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For list views to have good performance you ll need to implement the holder pattern  and that s easy to mess up especially when you want to populate the list with several different kinds of views     The RecyclerView bakes this pattern in  making it more difficult to mess up   It s also more flexible  making it easier to handle different layouts  that aren t straight linear  like a grid

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ListView is the ancestor to RecyclerView  There were many things that ListView either didn t do  or didn t do well   If you were to gather the shortcomings of the ListView and solved the problem by abstracting the problems into different domains you d end up with something like the recycler view  Here are the main problem points with ListViews    Didn t enforce View Reuse for same item types  look at one of the adapters that are used in a ListView  if you study the getView method you will see that nothing prevents a programmer from creating a new view for every row even if one is passed in via the convertView variable  Didn t prevent costly findViewById uses Even if you were recycling views as noted above it was possible for devs to be calling findViewById to update the displayed contents of child views  The main purpose of the ViewHolder pattern in ListViews was to cache the findViewById calls   However this was only available if you knew about it as it wasn t part of the platform at all  Only supported Vertical Scrolling with Row displayed Views  Recycler view doesn t care about where views are placed and how they are moved  it s abstracted into a LayoutManager  A Recycler can therefore support the traditional ListView as shown above  as well as things like the GridView  but it isn t limited to that  it can do more  but you have to do the programming foot work to make it happen     Animations to added removed was not a use case that was considered   It was completely up to you to figure out how go about this  compare the RecyclerView  Adapter classes notify  method offerings v  ListViews to get an idea     In short RecyclerView is a more flexible take on the ListView  albeit more coding may need to be done on your part

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In addition to above differences following are few more    RV separates view creation and binding of data to view  In LV  you need to check if convertView is null or not for creating view  before binding data to it  So  in case of RV  view will be created only when it is needed but in case of LV  one can miss the check for convertview and will create view everytime  Switching between Grid and List is more easy now with LayoutManager  No need to notify and update all items  even if only single item is changed  One had to implement view caching in case of LV  It is provided in RV by default   There is difference between view caching n recycling   Very easy item animations in case of RV

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In my opinion RecyclerView was made to address the problem with the recycle pattern used in listviews because it was making developer s life more difficult  All the other you could handle more or less  For instance I use the same adapter for ListView and GridView it doesn t matter in both views the getView  getItemCount  getTypeCount is used so it s the same  RecyclerView isn t needed if ListView with ListAdapter or GridView with grid adapters is already working for you  If you have implemented correctly the ViewHolder pattern in your listviews then you won t see any big improvement over RecycleView

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Advantages of RecyclerView over listview     Contains ViewHolder by default  Easy animations  Supports horizontal   grid and staggered layouts   Advantages of listView over recyclerView     Easy to add divider  Can use inbuilt arrayAdapter for simple plain lists Supports Header and footer   Supports OnItemClickListner

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I think the main and biggest difference they have is that ListView looks for the position of the item while creating or putting it  on the other hand RecyclerView looks for the type of the item  if there is another item created with the same type RecyclerView does not create it again  It asks first adapter and then asks to recycledpool  if recycled pool says  yeah I ve created a type similar to it   then RecyclerView doesn t try to create same type  ListView doesn t have a this kind of pooling mechanism

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I worked a little with RecyclerView and still prefer ListView    Sure  both of them use ViewHolders  so this is not an advantage  A RecyclerView is more difficult in coding  A RecyclerView doesn t contain a header and footer  so it s a minus  A ListView doesn t require to make a ViewHolder  In cases where you want to have a list with sections or subheaders it would be a good idea to make independent items  without a ViewHolder   it s easier and doesn t require separate classes

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I want just emphasize that RecyclerView is a part of the compatibility package  It means that instead of using the feature and code from OS  every application carries own RecyclerView implementation  Potentially  a feature similar to RecyclerView can be a part of a future OS and using it from there can be beneficial  For example Harmony OS will be out soon The compatibility package license can be changed in the future and it can be an implication  Summery of disadvantages   licensing a bigger foot print especially as a part of many apps losing in efficiency if some feature coming from OS can be there  But on a good note  an implementation of some functionality  as swiping items  is coming from RecyclerView  All said above has to be taken in a consideration

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Major advantage    ViewHolder is not available by default in ListView  We will be creating explicitly inside the getView    RecyclerView has inbuilt Viewholder

[android] RecyclerView vs. ListView

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