Add animation to an ExpandableListView

Question

Is there a way to add animation when opening an expandable list in Android? I want it so that when the user clicks on the expandable list, it has an animation/effect like I'm opening a sliding drawer.

It moves slow until it is completely opened.

Answer 1

I've spent a lot of time searching with no luck. The existing solutions are just not smooth enough - if your layout is something more complex than just 2 buttons, it becomes laggy.

So, I've created my own ListAdapter that caches the whole view into a Bitmap and then performs the animation on the cached view instead of the view itself. It works much faster.

Here it is: https://github.com/dmitry-zaitsev/ExpandableAdapter

The good news is that you don't need to rewrite a bunch of code - just wrap my ExpandableAdapter around your adapter and provide the id of the view that will act like a toggle button and the id of the view that holds the content of the second level:

new ExpandableAdapter(context, yourAdapter, R.id.switch, R.id.holder);

And that is all.

Answer 2

I have tried to make this work as well. I have found one solution that works for the childViews. It does not animate the actual expanding of the group though, but animates the child cells as they fill the space the expansion leaves behind.

Edit: There is a bug in collapsing, which will make some cells that should not be hidden, become hidden. This is probably related to View-recycling in the listView. I will will update when I have a solution to this.

Animating with layoutAnimation in setOnGroupClickListener

        mResultList.setOnGroupClickListener(new ExpandableListView.OnGroupClickListener() {
        @Override
        public boolean onGroupClick(ExpandableListView parent, View v, int groupPosition, long id) {
            if(mResultList.isGroupExpanded(groupPosition)){
                mProgAdap.prepareToCollapseGroup(groupPosition);
                setupLayoutAnimationClose(groupPosition);
                mResultList.requestLayout();
            }else{
                boolean autoScrollToExpandedGroup = false;
                mResultList.expandGroup(groupPosition,autoScrollToExpandedGroup);
                setupLayoutAnimation();
                //*/
            }
            //telling the listView we have handled the group click, and don't want the default actions.
            return true;
        }

        private void setupLayoutAnimation() {
            AnimationSet set = new AnimationSet(true);
            Animation animation = new AlphaAnimation(0.0f, 1.0f);
            animation.setDuration(50);
            set.addAnimation(animation);

            animation = new ScaleAnimation(1.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f, 1.0f, 0.5f, 1.0f);
            animation.setDuration(50);
            set.addAnimation(animation);

            LayoutAnimationController controller = new LayoutAnimationController(set, 0.75f);
            mResultList.setLayoutAnimationListener(null);
            mResultList.setLayoutAnimation(controller);
        }

        private void setupLayoutAnimationClose(final int groupPosition) {
            AnimationSet set = new AnimationSet(true);
            Animation animation = new AlphaAnimation(1.0f, 0.0f);
            animation.setDuration(50);
            animation.setFillAfter(true);
            animation.setFillEnabled(true);
            set.addAnimation(animation);
            animation = new ScaleAnimation(1.0f, 1.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f, 0.5f, 0.0f);
            animation.setDuration(50);
            animation.setFillAfter(true);
            animation.setFillEnabled(true);
            set.addAnimation(animation);
            set.setFillAfter(true);
            set.setFillEnabled(true);
            LayoutAnimationController controller = new LayoutAnimationController(set, 0.75f);
            controller.setOrder(LayoutAnimationController.ORDER_REVERSE);
            mResultList.setLayoutAnimationListener(new Animation.AnimationListener() {
                @Override
                public void onAnimationStart(Animation animation) {

                }

                @Override
                public void onAnimationEnd(Animation animation) {
                    mResultList.collapseGroup(groupPosition);
                }

                @Override
                public void onAnimationRepeat(Animation animation) {

                }
            });
            mResultList.setLayoutAnimation(controller);
        }
    });

We need more tweaks to make the animation only apply to the actual children of the expanded/collapsed group. Because we can't overload the correct part in the LayoutAnimationController, we need to create a special ViewGroup class. This is the same technique as in , "Can LayoutAnimationController animate only specified Views".

In the ExpandableListViewAdapter, we now need some state handling to allow or ignore animation on items in the list.

    @Override
public void onGroupExpanded(int groupPos){
    super.onGroupExpanded(groupPos);

    int childCount = getChildrenCount(groupPos);
    Log.d("EXPLIST","setting children to be expanded:" + childCount);

    for(int j=0; j < getGroupCount(); j++){
        for(int k=0; k < getChildrenCount(j); k++){
            GoalServiceCell cell =  (GoalServiceCell)getChild(j,k);
            cell.expandAnimState = GoalServiceCell.ExpandAnimState.SHOULD_NOT_ANIMATE;
        }
    }

    for(int i=0; i < childCount; i++){
        GoalServiceCell cell =  (GoalServiceCell)getChild(groupPos,i);
        cell.expandAnimState = GoalServiceCell.ExpandAnimState.SHOULD_START_EXPAND;

    }

}

public void prepareToCollapseGroup(int groupPos){
    int childCount = getChildrenCount(groupPos);
    for(int j=0; j < getGroupCount(); j++){
        for(int k=0; k < getChildrenCount(j); k++){
            GoalServiceCell cell =  (GoalServiceCell)getChild(j,k);
            cell.expandAnimState = GoalServiceCell.ExpandAnimState.SHOULD_NOT_ANIMATE;
        }
    }

    for(int i=0; i < childCount; i++){
        GoalServiceCell cell =  (GoalServiceCell)getChild(groupPos,i);
        cell.expandAnimState = GoalServiceCell.ExpandAnimState.SHOULD_START_COLLAPSIN;

    }
}

@Override
public void onGroupCollapsed(int groupPos){
    super.onGroupCollapsed(groupPos);
    int childCount = getChildrenCount(groupPos);
    for(int i=0; i < childCount; i++){
        GoalServiceCell cell =  (GoalServiceCell)getChild(groupPos,i);
        cell.expandAnimState = GoalServiceCell.ExpandAnimState.SHOULD_NOT_ANIMATE;
    }

}

And in the ViewHolder of the children.

       void expandOrCollapse(GoalServiceCell cell,int position){

        AnimationAverseRelativeLayout hack = (AnimationAverseRelativeLayout)master;
        boolean shouldAnim = cell.expandAnimState == GoalServiceCell.ExpandAnimState.SHOULD_START_EXPAND ||
                             cell.expandAnimState == GoalServiceCell.ExpandAnimState.SHOULD_START_COLLAPSIN;
        hack.setIfShouldAnimate(shouldAnim);

    }

The GroupViews are also contained in a AnimationAverseRelativeLayout. Since I have set "shouldAnimate" to default to false, I don't need to touch them.

Answer 3

I had this same exact problem. And I fixed it once and for all. I open-sourced it to github. https://github.com/tjerkw/Android-SlideExpandableListView

Basically, you include this project dependency with your Android project. And then wrap your ListAdapter into a SlideExpandableListAdapter. The wrapper will then add the slide functionality with animation to your ListView.

Hope it helps you, I'm already using it in two projects.