How can you listen to click events on a ListView that occur outside of the list items?

Question

I have a ListView that takes up the entire screen, but sometimes it doesn't have enough items in it to completely cover the ListView widget. I'd like to be able to respond to clicks on that empty space below the last item that doesn't actually contain an item (meaning setOnItemClickListener isn't appropriate).

I've tried setOnClickListener (which they disable for the ListView itself) on a parent view, but clicks don't seem to be reaching it. I also tried setOnTouchListener on the ListView, but that caused some item clicks to not register for some reason. Any ideas on how to accomplish this?

Answer 1

Ran into similiar problem where I needed to close expanded list elements when empty space is clicked. Here is how I solved it.

public class CustomListView extends ListView {

  private OnNoItemClickListener mOnNoItemClickListener;

  public interface OnNoItemClickListener {
    void onNoItemClicked();
  }

  public CustomListView(Context context) {
    super(context);
  }

  public CustomListView(Context context, AttributeSet attrs) {
    super(context, attrs);
  }

  public CustomListView(Context context, AttributeSet attrs, int defStyle) {
    super(context, attrs, defStyle);
  }

  @Override
  public boolean dispatchTouchEvent(MotionEvent ev) {
    //check whether the touch hit any elements INCLUDING ListView footer
    if(pointToPosition((int) (ev.getX() * ev.getXPrecision()), 
       (int) (ev.getY() * ev.getYPrecision())) == -1 && ev.getAction() == MotionEvent.ACTION_DOWN) {
      if(mOnNoItemClickListener != null) {
        mOnNoItemClickListener.onNoItemClicked();
      }
    }
    return super.dispatchTouchEvent(ev);
  }

  public void setOnNoItemClickListener(OnNoItemClickListener listener) {
    mOnNoItemClickListener = listener;
  }

}

Then use this CustomListView in your XML file instead of regular ListView and implement OnNoItemClickListener inside your activity / fragment and call mListView.setOnNoItemClickListener(this); in onCreate to enable callback to onNoItemClicked() function.

Note that if your ListView has headers or footers then these are considered as list elements and the onNoItemClicked() won't be called.