How to NOT save view state in Android?

Question

I am developing app, where I need to display suggestions in ListView and when orientation changed I want that list to be hidden. But it appears on the screen anyway. I tried this: 1) Get list adapter and clear it. 2) Set visibility GONE before orientation changed (but it becomes visible again after onCreate) 3) Set visibility GONE in onCreate, but the list still appears on the screen (I think that maybe android saves old list, because I initialize list view again and it looks like empty, but the list on the screen isn't). So, how can i get rid of the list?

Answer 1

Instead of using something global like android:configChanges which affect ALL the views in the Activity, what about using the method setSaveEnabled(boolean) or the equivalent xml attribute android:saveEnabled ?

Controls whether the saving of this view's state is enabled (that is, whether its onSaveInstanceState() method will be called).

If you set it to false it should always go back to the default state when changing orientation because its state won't be saved.

You could, for example, put this in the layout file:

<ListView
    ....
    android:visibility="invisible"
    android:saveEnabled="false">
</ListView>

and then set the visibility to VISIBLE when you start typing. Or if you prefer put the visibility and the method setSaveEnabled in the onCreate method.

I tried with a simple ListView and a Button that changes the visibility to true. On rotation the ListView became invisibile(its default state)

Also note that:

This flag can only disable the saving of this view; any child views may still have their state saved.

so you should have to clear the list during onStop() or whatever method you want but if even if you don't, the ListView will still be invisible on rotation

Source:

• http://developer.android.com/reference/android/view/View.html#attr_android:saveEnabled
• http://developer.android.com/reference/android/view/View.html#setSaveEnabled%28boolean%29