Earlier today the latest Android 0.9 SDK was released, and it’s packed full of wonderful changes. As you play around, you might see ListViews split into sections using separating headers. (Example shown on the right is the browser settings list.)

There isn’t an easy way of creating these separated lists, so I’ve put together SeparatedListAdapter which does it quickly. To summarize, we’re creating a new BaseAdapter that can contain several other Adapters, each with their own section headers.

First let’s create some simple XML layouts to be used for our lists: first the header view, then two item views that we’ll use later for the individual lists. (Thanks to Romain Guy for helping me find existing styles to keep these XML layouts nice and tidy.)

<!-- list_header.xml -->
<TextView
	xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
	android:id="@+id/list_header_title"
	android:layout_width="fill_parent"
	android:layout_height="wrap_content"
	android:paddingTop="2dip"
	android:paddingBottom="2dip"
	android:paddingLeft="5dip"
	style="?android:attr/listSeparatorTextViewStyle" />

<!-- list_item.xml -->
<TextView
	xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
	android:id="@+id/list_item_title"
	android:layout_width="fill_parent"
	android:layout_height="fill_parent"
	android:paddingTop="10dip"
	android:paddingBottom="10dip"
	android:paddingLeft="15dip"
	android:textAppearance="?android:attr/textAppearanceLarge"
	/>

<!-- list_complex.xml -->
<LinearLayout
	xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
	android:layout_width="fill_parent"
	android:layout_height="wrap_content"
	android:orientation="vertical"
	android:paddingTop="10dip"
	android:paddingBottom="10dip"
	android:paddingLeft="15dip"
	>
	<TextView
		android:id="@+id/list_complex_title"
		android:layout_width="fill_parent"
		android:layout_height="wrap_content"
		android:textAppearance="?android:attr/textAppearanceLarge"
		/>
	<TextView
		android:id="@+id/list_complex_caption"
		android:layout_width="fill_parent"
		android:layout_height="wrap_content"
		android:textAppearance="?android:attr/textAppearanceSmall"
		/>
</LinearLayout>

Now let’s create the actual SeparatedListAdapter class which provides a single interface to multiple sections of other Adapters. After using addSection() to construct the child sections, you can easily use ListView.setAdapter() to present the now-separated list to users.

As for the Adapter internals, to correctly find the selected item among the child Adapters, we walk through subtracting from the original position until we find either a header (position = 0) or item in the current child Adapter (position < size).

Here’s the source for SeparatedListAdapter:

public class SeparatedListAdapter extends BaseAdapter {

	public final Map<String,Adapter> sections = new LinkedHashMap<String,Adapter>();
	public final ArrayAdapter<String> headers;
	public final static int TYPE_SECTION_HEADER = 0;

	public SeparatedListAdapter(Context context) {
		headers = new ArrayAdapter<String>(context, R.layout.list_header);
	}

	public void addSection(String section, Adapter adapter) {
		this.headers.add(section);
		this.sections.put(section, adapter);
	}

	public Object getItem(int position) {
		for(Object section : this.sections.keySet()) {
			Adapter adapter = sections.get(section);
			int size = adapter.getCount() + 1;

			// check if position inside this section
			if(position == 0) return section;
			if(position < size) return adapter.getItem(position - 1);

			// otherwise jump into next section
			position -= size;
		}
		return null;
	}

	public int getCount() {
		// total together all sections, plus one for each section header
		int total = 0;
		for(Adapter adapter : this.sections.values())
			total += adapter.getCount() + 1;
		return total;
	}

	public int getViewTypeCount() {
		// assume that headers count as one, then total all sections
		int total = 1;
		for(Adapter adapter : this.sections.values())
			total += adapter.getViewTypeCount();
		return total;
	}

	public int getItemViewType(int position) {
		int type = 1;
		for(Object section : this.sections.keySet()) {
			Adapter adapter = sections.get(section);
			int size = adapter.getCount() + 1;

			// check if position inside this section
			if(position == 0) return TYPE_SECTION_HEADER;
			if(position < size) return type + adapter.getItemViewType(position - 1);

			// otherwise jump into next section
			position -= size;
			type += adapter.getViewTypeCount();
		}
		return -1;
	}

	public boolean areAllItemsSelectable() {
		return false;
	}

	public boolean isEnabled(int position) {
		return (getItemViewType(position) != TYPE_SECTION_HEADER);
	}

	@Override
	public View getView(int position, View convertView, ViewGroup parent) {
		int sectionnum = 0;
		for(Object section : this.sections.keySet()) {
			Adapter adapter = sections.get(section);
			int size = adapter.getCount() + 1;

			// check if position inside this section
			if(position == 0) return headers.getView(sectionnum, convertView, parent);
			if(position < size) return adapter.getView(position - 1, convertView, parent);

			// otherwise jump into next section
			position -= size;
			sectionnum++;
		}
		return null;
	}

	@Override
	public long getItemId(int position) {
		return position;
	}

}

As expected, it correctly prevents the section headers from being selected, and seamlessly stiches together the various Adapters.

This approach also uses convertView correctly as long as the child Adapters return getItemViewType() and getViewTypeCount() normally. No special changes are needed for an Adapter to become a child.

Now let’s use SeparatedListAdapter in some example code. We use the XML layouts defined earlier to create an ArrayAdapter and an advanced two-row SimpleAdapter, and then add both as sections to our SeparatedListAdapter.

public class ListSample extends Activity {

	public final static String ITEM_TITLE = "title";
	public final static String ITEM_CAPTION = "caption";

	public Map<String,?> createItem(String title, String caption) {
		Map<String,String> item = new HashMap<String,String>();
		item.put(ITEM_TITLE, title);
		item.put(ITEM_CAPTION, caption);
		return item;
	}

	@Override
	public void onCreate(Bundle icicle) {
		super.onCreate(icicle);

		List<Map<String,?>> security = new LinkedList<Map<String,?>>();
		security.add(createItem("Remember passwords", "Save usernames and passwords for Web sites"));
		security.add(createItem("Clear passwords", "Save usernames and passwords for Web sites"));
		security.add(createItem("Show security warnings", "Show warning if there is a problem with a site's security"));

		// create our list and custom adapter
		SeparatedListAdapter adapter = new SeparatedListAdapter(this);
		adapter.addSection("Array test", new ArrayAdapter<String>(this,
			R.layout.list_item, new String[] { "First item", "Item two" }));
		adapter.addSection("Security", new SimpleAdapter(this, security, R.layout.list_complex,
			new String[] { ITEM_TITLE, ITEM_CAPTION }, new int[] { R.id.list_complex_title, R.id.list_complex_caption }));

		ListView list = new ListView(this);
		list.setAdapter(adapter);
		this.setContentView(list);

	}

}

The resulting interface behaves just like the browser preferences list, and you could easily create other custom Adapters to insert into the various sections, such as including icons or checkboxes.

These section headers can really help separate out otherwise-cluttered activities. I used them several places in my CompareEverywhere application which lets you easily compare prices and read reviews for any product with a barcode.

Source: http://www.jsharkey.org/blog/2008/08/18/separating-lists-with-headers-in-android-09/

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