Android: how to use SectionIndexer

Question

I am trying to find a way to use SectionIndexer, instead of AlphabetIndexer. What I am interested to do is to have elements of a string arrays on the section headers instead of alphabets. I have not been able to find any sample code using section indexer.

Here is a sample code for AlphabetIndexer:

private AlphabetIndexer indexer;
indexer = new AlphabetIndexer(c, c.getColumnIndexOrThrow(
   DbHelper.COUNTRIES_NAME),"ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ");

Is it possible to pass a stringArray instead of "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ" to the AlphabetIndexer so I can for example instead of "A", "B", ..."Z" as header have "Book", "Food", ...on the headers?

If not what is the best way to do that? Any reference to a sample code that uses SectionIndexer instead of AlphabetIndexer would be helpful as well.

Thanks for the help. TJ

Answer 1

You can try to write a custom ArrayAdapter and basically return a "section header" view in the getView(...) method for the positions where headers should appear.

You'll also have to overwrite getViewTypeCount () to return the number of new types of views (in this case 2) and getItemViewType (int position) to return the type of view for the current position.

Also, the onItemClickListener should check to see if the item you clicked on is a section header.

This is my custom array adapter:

public class ItemListAdapter extends ArrayAdapter<ModelItem>
{
    private static final int    TYPE_SECTION_HEADER = 0;
    private static final int    TYPE_LIST_ITEM  = 1;

    int mDefaultRowLayoutResID;
    Context mContext;
    LayoutInflater mInflater;
    ArrayList<ModelItem> lItems;

    public ItemListAdapter(Context context, int resource, ArrayList<ModelItem> items)
    {
        super(context, resource, items);
        mContext = context;
        mResource = resource;
        mInflater = (LayoutInflater)context.getSystemService(Context.LAYOUT_INFLATER_SERVICE);
        lItems = items;
    }

    @Override
    public ModelItem getItem(int position)
    {
        return lItems.get(position);
    }

    @Override
    public int getCount()
    {
        return lItems.size();
    }

    @Override
    public int getViewTypeCount()
    {
        return 2;
    }

    @Override
    public int getItemViewType(int position)
    {
        ModelItem item = lItems.get(position);
        if (item.isHeader())
        {
            return TYPE_SECTION_HEADER;
        }
        else
        {
            return TYPE_LIST_ITEM;
        }
    }

    @Override
    public View getView(int position, View convertView, ViewGroup parent)
    {
        ViewHolder holder;
        ModelItem item = getItem(position);

        if (convertView == null)
        {
            if (item.isHeader())
            {
                convertView = mInflater.inflate(R.layout.row_item_section_header, null);
                holder = new ViewHolder();
                holder.title = (TextView)convertView.findViewById(R.id.list_header_title);
                holder.subtitle = null;
                convertView.setTag(holder);
            }
            else
            {
                convertView = mInflater.inflate(R.layout.row_item_default, null);
                holder = new ViewHolder();
                holder.title = (TextView)convertView.findViewById(R.id.row_item_title);
                holder.subtitle = (TextView)convertView.findViewById(R.id.row_item_subtitle);
                convertView.setTag(holder);
            }
        }
        else
        {
            holder = (ViewHolder) convertView.getTag();
        }

        holder.title.setText(item.getTitle());
        if (holder.subtitle != null)
        {
            holder.subtitle.setText(item.getSubtitle());
        }
        return convertView;
    }

    private class ViewHolder
    {
        public TextView title;
        public TextView subtitle;
        public ImageView leftIcon;
        public View rightControl;
    }
}

This is the row_item_default.xml file:

<RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:layout_width="fill_parent"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    >
    <TextView
        android:id="@+id/row_item_title"
        android:layout_width="wrap_content"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    />
    <TextView
        android:id="@+id/row_item_subtitle"
        android:layout_width="wrap_content"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:layout_below="@+id/row_item_title"
    />
</RelativeLayout>

and this is the row_item_section_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"
    style="?android:attr/listSeparatorTextViewStyle"
/>

The ModelItem class is a simple container for title, subtitle and a boolean to tell if it's a section header or not.

This is not the only way to write this adapter but I hope this helps.