Android How To Reuse A Header Layout As An Empty View In A Listview

I've been grappling with this problem throughout the life of my project. I have many lists in my project and most of them have headers. I have been making a separate layout file

Solution 1:

If you want to show the header of a ListView when the list is empty, what you really want to do is to show the list itself rather than a separate empty view. So, the simplest way is to check whether your list is empty and set the list visible if it is not already:

getListView().setVisibility(View.VISIBLE);

You can test this very easily with the following code:

publicclassTestListActivityextendsListActivity {
    @OverrideprotectedvoidonCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        setContentView(R.layout.test_listview);

        // create the empty grid item mapping
        String[] from = newString[] {};
        int[] to = newint[] {};

        // prepare the empty list
        List<HashMap<String, String>> fillMaps = newArrayList<HashMap<String, String>>();

        // fill in the grid_item layoutSimpleAdapteradapter=newSimpleAdapter(this, fillMaps, R.layout.test_listitem, from, to);

        ViewlistHeader= 
                ((LayoutInflater)getSystemService(Context.LAYOUT_INFLATER_SERVICE))
                .inflate(R.layout.test_listheader, null, false);

        getListView().addHeaderView(listHeader);
        getListView().setAdapter(adapter);
    }
}

The list is empty, but the header is visible.

Solution 2:

My solution is to create a view with the layout for the header, but set the background to be the same as the list items. android:background="@android:drawable/list_selector_background"

But my solution does not work if I use 'include' to embed the header layout from another layout file. Do not know why.