Android ListView Background color

Question

I want each even item in the ListView to be of different color. For this purpose I used the following code :

public void bindView(View row, Context ctxt, Cursor c) {
            ViewHolder holder = (ViewHolder) row.getTag();
            if (c.getPosition() % 2 == 0) {
                row.setBackgroundDrawable(getResources().getDrawable(
                        R.drawable.dark_item_background));
            }

            holder.populateFrom(c, mDbHelper);
        }

But the item isn't highlighted after the touch event. Please advice how to overcome this.

Update

As Gophermofur advice I created a selector:

<selector xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">

    <item android:drawable="@drawable/list_activated_holo" android:state_activated="true"/>
    <item android:drawable="@color/item_back_color"/>

</selector>

Now it works on Jelly Bean and does not on Gingerbread. Any thoughts?

Answer 1

Items in a listview aren't actually defined as solid colours (black or white), they are defined using selectors where there are multiple colours for different states (normal = black, pressed = orange, focused = blue, etc).

When you start replacing the background colour of items in the listview with a solid colour, it overrides that selector so there are no longer different colours for different states.

Normally a listview selector is applied to the entire listivew, however, you may be able to apply it directly to an item's background or selector (I'm not sure and I can't test at the moment).

Take a look at these links to see how to create a selector XML file:

Tutorial

SO Question

Answer 2

Now it works on Jelly Bean and does not on Gingerbread. Any thoughts?

I'm not sure what your drawable/list_activated_holo is, but by the name of it it sounds like its using the android Holo theme - which was only added in API level 14. http://developer.android.com/design/style/themes.html

You'll need to define the colours in your own values/colors.xml if you want to use them on devices running less than API level 14.