Change LayoutManager depending on device format

Question

I have a RecyclerView with a list of Cards. I want to know whether it's possible to change the RecyclerView's LayoutManager to Linear, when using a phone, and StaggeredGrid, when using a tablet, programmatically. My initial idea was to have the same code on the Activity, and only change the layout.xml, but given Android uses different LayoutManagers, it seems note complicated than that. I also tried using Cardslib library, but got reeeaally confused by the documentation, since there is no complete example with custom cards. Any ideas?

Answer 1

Yes it is possible. One solution is to define a boolean resource in your values folder. For example, you can define:

<bool name="is_phone">true</bool>

in your values folder and in your values-sw720dp and values-sw600dp add the same resource with a false.

<bool name="is_phone">false</bool>

Then, in your Activity's onCreate(), you can do this:

    boolean isPhone = getResources().getBoolean(R.bool.is_phone);

    if (isPhone) {
        // Set linearlayoutmanager for your recyclerview.
    } else {
        // Set staggeredgridlayoutmanager for your recyclerview.
    }

Answer 2

So, as I told @androholic, what I was trying to figure out is how to have the layout change depending on the devices format. This way, whenever the app was loaded on a tablet, a Grid was shown, and a List on phones. However, in order to do this with a RecyclerView, two LayouManagers would be needed: LinearLayoutManager for the list, and Staggered/GridLayoutManager, making the code a bit more complicated.

What I did: I used a GridLayoutManager for the general case. What I would change according to the screen size would be only the number of columns. This way, a list would be a RecyclerView with a GridLayoutManager with 1 column, and a grid would have more than one. In my case, I use only 2 columns.

My code is as follows.

public class AppListActivity extends AppCompatActivity {

private ArrayList<App> apps;
private int columns;


private String root = Environment.getExternalStorageDirectory().toString();

private boolean isTablet;
private RecyclerViewAdapter rvadapter;

public static Context context;
private SwipeRefreshLayout swipeContainer;


@Override
protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
    context = getApplicationContext();
    //CHECK WHETHER THE DEVICE IS A TABLET OR A PHONE
    isTablet = getResources().getBoolean(R.bool.isTablet);
    if (isTablet()) { //it's a tablet
        setRequestedOrientation (ActivityInfo.SCREEN_ORIENTATION_PORTRAIT);
        columns = 2;
    } else { //it's a phone, not a tablet
        setRequestedOrientation (ActivityInfo.SCREEN_ORIENTATION_LANDSCAPE);
        columns = 1;
    }
 //SwipeContainer SETUP
 //ArrayList and RecyclerView initialization
    apps = new ArrayList<App>();

    RecyclerView rv = (RecyclerView) findViewById(R.id.recycler_view);

    rv.setHasFixedSize(true);
    GridLayoutManager gridlm = new GridLayoutManager(getApplicationContext(),columns);
    rv.setLayoutManager(gridlm);
    rvadapter = new RecyclerViewAdapter(apps);
    rv.setAdapter(rvadapter);
    }
    public boolean isTablet() {
       return isTablet;
    }

The method isTablet is pretty much the same one on @androholic's answer. Hopefully, this will clear up any doubts on what my question was (I realize my wording wasn't the best), and what I accomplished.