expandable listview or clickable linear layout

Question

I am trying to create something like (very poorly created in paint) in the image below:

I have only 4 items, and it won't be more. the items contains two textviews. But when you click on an item, i want it to expand, (like item 2) to the bottom with three extra buttons. It would be really nice if there would be some nice expand animation. I don't want this list to be scrollabe, it just need to fits in my screen. And only one can be expanded.

I think there are two options, but maybe i am missing something. 1) Create an itemlayout.xml, containing an linearlayout or something containing the extra buttons, set to linearlayoutbuttoncontainer.setvisibility(View.GONE). And then build a switch, which closes the others than the clicked one, and set the visibility of the clicked item to visible. This would be fairly easy to build i guess, i don't foresee a lot of problems. But is it possible creating an animation or is there only a sudden screen change?

2) expandable listview, with the buttons in the expandable item. I know its possible to make only one item expanded, by rembering the expanded one and closing it again. But is it possible to make it like this, with the buttons in the expandable part? Actually i've never used an expandable view.

Anyone know what the best solution should be? Thanks

Answer 1

I would recommend using an expandable list view for this, as your second option described. For this type of list you can use a expandable listview adapter, describded here:

http://developer.android.com/reference/android/widget/ExpandableListAdapter.html

This adapter has both a getGroupView(open/close items) and a getChildView method in which you can inflate your layouts, or manually set them up. If you have used ordinary listviews I'm sure this wont be a problem for you, since it's basically the same operations.

This means you should probably inflate your childViews with a LinearLayout containing three buttons. Then you have to implement functionality for your collapse/expand logics by keeping track of which item index is opened.

I did this tutorial when I first started out with exp.list views, I found it helpful:

http://android-adda.blogspot.se/2011/06/custom-expandable-listview.html

Good luck!

Answer 2

You gotta check this http://udinic.wordpress.com/2011/09/03/expanding-listview-items/ it works neat. If you got any more problems, do ask...