How to make a button focusable in an item in RecyclerView

Question

On Android TV, I have a problem trying to get focus of a button that is on a row of a RecyclerView . I already set the button to focusable but still does not get the focus. I added a focus handler on the view of the row but I am not if this is what's causing the problem:

public RecyclerView.ViewHolder onCreateViewHolder(ViewGroup parent, int type)
{
    final FriendsListViewItem.ItemType itemType = FriendsListViewItem.ItemType.FromInt(type);

    LinearLayout cellLayout = new LinearLayout(m_context);
    cellLayout.setOrientation(LinearLayout.VERTICAL);
    RecyclerView.LayoutParams cellParams = new  RecyclerView.LayoutParams(RecyclerView.LayoutParams.MATCH_PARENT,   RecyclerView.LayoutParams.WRAP_CONTENT);
    cellLayout.setLayoutParams(cellParams);

    // create cell data view
    View cellData = new CellView(m_context);
    LinearLayout.LayoutParams params = new      LinearLayout.LayoutParams(LinearLayout.LayoutParams.MATCH_PARENT,       LinearLayout.LayoutParams.WRAP_CONTENT);
    cellData.setLayoutParams(params);
    cellData.setFocusable(true);
    cellLayout.addView(cellData);
    cellLayout.setOnFocusChangeaListener(new OnFocusChangeaListener)
    {  
        @Override
        public void onFocusChange(View v, boolean hasFocus)
        {
        if(hasFocus)
        {
            v.setBackgroundColor(ContextCompat.getColor(m_context, R.color.friend_cell_highlight_color));
        }
        else
        {
            v.setBackgroundColor(Color.TRANSPARENT);
        }
    }
    return new ViewHolder(cellLayout);
}

CellView is the class that contains the button.

Answer 1

It looks like you might be building your lists from scratch, but I'd highly recommend using the Leanback library from the Android team (at very least for lists). They provide a nice example which includes video playback, navigation, and lists in their sample app .

For your issue specifically, this is solved via their RowsFragment . The RowsFragment is responsible for drawing items in a row and broadcasting out "selection" (or focus) events and "click" events. You can see an exact example here .

Instead of calling setOnItemClickedListener(...) on the RowsFragment , you'd use setOnItemSelectedListener(...) like below:

        setOnItemViewSelectedListener(new OnItemViewSelectedListener() {
            @Override
            public void onItemSelected(ViewHolder itemViewHolder, Object item,
                                       RowPresenter.ViewHolder rowViewHolder, Row row) {
                // Do what you want to the itemViewHolder or item
            }
        });

---

Another approach would be to subclass BaseCardView then you could override the setSelected() method to update it however you'd like - this should most likely take place in your Presenter . A Presenter in Leanback basically replaces Adapters you'd use for a RecyclerView. The presenter is responsible for binding your data model to your list item.

@Override
final protected BaseCardView onCreateView(Context context) {
    final BaseCardView cardView = new BaseCardView(context, null, R.style.YourCardStyle) {
        @Override
        public void setSelected(boolean selected) {
            updateCardBackgroundColor(this, selected);
            super.setSelected(selected);
        }
    };

    cardView.addView(LayoutInflater.from(context).inflate(R.layout.your_card_layout, null));
    initCardView(cardView);
    return cardView;
}

I highly recommend opening up their example app in Android Studio and get it running. Then poke around a little bit.