Inflating a ListView

We need to inflate a listview in 2 cases.

1. When we want to display a listview at run time
2. When we need a custom listview

We will see both the cases with examples.
Case 1: In this example we will  inflate a listview. See how

Android Layout File
File: res/layout/main.xml

<linearlayout 
android:id="@+id/layout1" 
android:layout_height="match_parent" 
android:layout_width="match_parent" 
android:orientation="vertical" 
xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">

   <textview 
android:id="@+id/namelabel" 
android:layout_height="wrap_content" 
android:layout_width="wrap_content" 
android:text="Text Paragraph.">
    </textview> 
</linearlayout>

We have another layout file activity_main having listview in it.
File: res/layout/activity_main.xml

<ListView
 xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
 android:id="@+id/listview"
 android:layout_width="fill_parent"
 android:layout_height="fill_parent"
 android:cacheColorHint="#EEEEEE"
 android:background="#CCCCCC" />

We are going to inflate layout activity_main in our main activity.Our main inflatelistview activity is as follows.

package com.example.inflatelistview;

import java.util.ArrayList;

import java.util.HashMap;
import java.util.List;

import android.os.Bundle;
import android.app.Activity;
import android.content.Context;
import android.view.LayoutInflater;
import android.view.Menu;
import android.widget.AdapterView;
import android.widget.ArrayAdapter;
import android.widget.LinearLayout;
import android.widget.ListView;
import android.widget.TextView;

public class inflatelistview extends Activity {
 LinearLayout ILayout;
   @Override
   protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
     super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
     setContentView(R.layout.main);

     final LayoutInflater  inflater = (LayoutInflater)getSystemService(Context.LAYOUT_INFLATER_SERVICE);
        ListView t = (ListView)inflater.inflate(R.layout.activity_main,null);
        
        ILayout = (LinearLayout)findViewById(R.id.layout1);
        ILayout.addView(t);
     String[] values = new String[] { "Item1","Item2","Item3","Item4"};

     final ArrayList list = new ArrayList();
     for (int i = 0; i < values.length; ++i) {
       list.add(values[i]);
     }
     final OurArrayAdapter adapter = new OurArrayAdapter(this,
         android.R.layout.simple_list_item_1, list);
     t.setAdapter(adapter);

     
   }

   private class OurArrayAdapter extends ArrayAdapter {

     HashMap MapValue = new HashMap();

     public OurArrayAdapter(Context context, int textViewResourceId,
         List objects) {
       super(context, textViewResourceId, objects);
       for (int i = 0; i < objects.size(); ++i) {
         MapValue.put(objects.get(i), i);
       }
     }

     @Override
     public long getItemId(int position) {
       String item = getItem(position);
       return MapValue.get(item);
     }

     @Override
     public boolean hasStableIds() {
       return true;
     }

   }

 } 

The same thing we can do without inflating in a simple way by including listview in our main.xml and adding
final ListView listview = (ListView) findViewById(R.id.listview); 

instead of

final LayoutInflater inflater = (LayoutInflater)getSystemService(Context.LAYOUT_INFLATER_SERVICE);
ListView t = (ListView)inflater.inflate(R.layout.activity_main,null);
ILayout = (LinearLayout)findViewById(R.id.layout1);
ILayout.addView(t); 

Case 2: We will create a custom listview having a image & text in it. To create a custom listview,we need to create custom adapter. In this example we will use arrayadapter for easy understanding. You will need 2 layout files. One, main.xml, will define the attributes of the ListView. The other, mainlvitem.xml, will be the layout of each individual row in the ListView.

 File: res/layout/main.xml:

<ListView
 xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
 android:id="@+id/listview"
 android:layout_width="fill_parent"
 android:layout_height="fill_parent"
 android:cacheColorHint="#EEEEEE"
 android:background="#CCCCCC" />

Next File,res/layout/mainlvitem.xml:

<LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
 android:layout_width="fill_parent"
 android:layout_height="fill_parent"
 android:orientation="horizontal"
 android:paddingLeft="4dp"
 android:paddingRight="15dp"
 android:paddingTop="13dp"
 android:paddingBottom="13dp"
 android:weightSum="1"
 android:background="#FFFFFF" >

 <ImageView
  android:id="@+id/img"
  android:layout_width="wrap_content"
  android:layout_height="wrap_content"
  android:layout_gravity="center_vertical"
  android:layout_weight="0.10" />

 <TextView
  android:id="@+id/txt"
  android:layout_width="0dp"
  android:layout_height="wrap_content"
  android:layout_gravity="center"
  android:gravity="left"
  android:layout_weight="0.90"
  android:paddingLeft="10dp"
  android:textColor="#222222"/>
</LinearLayout>

Now the main activity is

package com.example.inflatelistview;

import android.app.Activity;
import android.content.Context;
import android.os.Bundle;
import android.view.LayoutInflater;
import android.view.View;
import android.view.ViewGroup;
import android.widget.ArrayAdapter;
import android.widget.ImageView;
import android.widget.ListView;
import android.widget.TextView;
 
public class customlistview extends Activity {
 
// We will declare some variables within the class, but outside of any method so that
// any method can use them.
 
ListView lv; // The ListView we will be building
 
// A String[] array that will hold the names of the items.
String[] mItems = { "Item1", "Item2", "Item3" };
 
// An Integer[] array that will hold the resource drawables that will be displayed as icons.
 Integer[] mIcons =
 { R.drawable.ic_launcher, R.drawable.ic_launcher, R.drawable.ic_launcher };
 
// -----------------------------------------------
// onCreate()
// -----------------------------------------------
 
 @Override
 public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
    setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);
 
    // Here we will take the ListView that we declared in activity_main layout
    
    lv = (ListView) findViewById(R.id.listview);
 
    // Instead of using a regular ArrayAdapter to pull Strings from an array,
    // we will create a custom ArrayAdapter below. This bit of code sets the adapter
    // of our ListView, lv, to our customer adapter.
    ArrayAdapter adapter = new CustomAdapter(this, R.layout.mainlvitem, mItems);
    lv.setAdapter(adapter);
 
 } // end onCreate
 
// -----------------------------------------------
// This is our custom ArrayAdapter, CustomAdapter
// -----------------------------------------------
 
 public class CustomAdapter extends ArrayAdapter
    {
        public CustomAdapter(Context context, int textViewResourceId, String[] objects)
        {
            super(context, textViewResourceId, objects);
        }
 
        @Override
        public View getView(int position, View convertView, ViewGroup parent)
        {
            // Inflate the layout, mainlvitem.xml, in each row.
            LayoutInflater inflater = customlistview.this.getLayoutInflater();
            View row = inflater.inflate(R.layout.mainlvitem, parent, false);
 
            // Declare and define the TextView, "item." This is where
            // the name of each item will appear.
            TextView item = (TextView)row.findViewById(R.id.txt);
            item.setText(mItems[position]);
 
            // Declare and define the TextView, "icon." This is where
            // the icon in each row will appear.
            ImageView icon=(ImageView)row.findViewById(R.id.img);
            icon.setImageResource(mIcons[position]);
 
            return row;
        }
    } // end CustomAdapter
}

We have used default images which comes with drawable folder ic_launcher in this program.However you can use any other image as you want. You need to put those images in appropriate folder.