Best way to create a custom view for every list item

Question

As I am reviewing and prototyping my android project, I noticed that there is a view that has a list of items that are very customized. I have figured out most of my tools that I plan to use but I need some advice.

I have a list of items which can contain photos, some text to the right, an image to the bottom and more text below that. Very confusing I know. Each of these might be present for an item. The only thing that will always be there is the title.

So my question - what is the best way to create each custom list item view? I am thinking I have to use this getView to create each view. But when creating each view, is it best to 1) create a view dynamically and adding an image, for example, if it exists, or 2) create an xml file with all possible elements and hide them depending on the item?

Answer 1

In terms of performance #2 is better because you will be able to reuse the convertView given by the ListView to your Adapter as a getView() argument. To allow smooth ListView scrolling, you have to avoid any View creation during the getView() call.

You can find an efficient implementation of getView() in this sample from the Developer Guide . There are 2 important points :

• reuse the convertView when available
• use a ViewHolder attached to the View to avoid having to find again your sub-views in each call to getView()

Answer 2

I'd go with #2. You can make an xml layout with all of your items present and then write a list adapter where you can hide and show items as needed. That way, if you need to change he layout you can just tweak the xml.