How to use setEmptyView() with custom list layout in ListFragment

Question

I'm using a paginator with a few Fragments.

I want to show a message when there are no entries in the list (Fragment).

I tried to use Textview with android:id="@id/android:empty but it doesn't work.

Custom list layout code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:padding="@dimen/padding_medium" >

    <TextView
        android:id="@+id/label_value"
        android:layout_width="wrap_content"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:layout_alignParentLeft="true"
        android:layout_centerVertical="true"
        android:layout_marginLeft="@dimen/padding_medium"
        android:text="@string/label_value"
        android:textColor="@android:color/white"
        android:textSize="18sp" />

    <TextView
        android:id="@+id/label_date"
        android:layout_width="wrap_content"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:layout_alignParentRight="true"
        android:layout_centerVertical="true"
        android:layout_marginRight="@dimen/padding_medium"
        android:text="@string/title_time"
        android:textColor="@android:color/white"
        android:textSize="16sp" />

</RelativeLayout>

List adapter class:

public class JournalAdapter extends ArrayAdapter<String> {

    private final Context context;
    private final List<String> values;
    private final List<String> dates;

    public JournalAdapter(Context context, List<String> values,
            List<String> dates) {
        super(context, R.layout.layout_journal_list, values);

        this.context = context;
        this.values = values;
        this.dates = dates;
    }

    @Override
    public View getView(int position, View convertView, ViewGroup parent) {
        LayoutInflater inflater = (LayoutInflater) context
                .getSystemService(Context.LAYOUT_INFLATER_SERVICE);

        View rowView = inflater.inflate(R.layout.layout_journal_list, parent, false);

        TextView value = (TextView) rowView.findViewById(R.id.label_glucose);
        TextView date = (TextView) rowView.findViewById(R.id.label_date);

        value.setText(values.get(position));
        date.setText(dates.get(position));

        return rowView;
    }

}

List parsing method:

private void initListView() {
        values = dataSource.getAllValues();

        List<String> values = new ArrayList<String>();
        List<String> dates = new ArrayList<String>();

        for (Value value : values) {
            values.add(Double.toString(value.getValue()));
            dates.add(secondsToDate(value.getDate()));
        }

        setListAdapter(new JournalAdapter(context, values, dates));

        listView = getListView();
        listView.setEmptyView(noItems("NO ITEMS"));
        listView.setOnItemClickListener(this);
    }

noItems method:

private TextView noItems(String text) {
        TextView emptyView = new TextView(context);
        emptyView.setLayoutParams(new LayoutParams(LayoutParams.FILL_PARENT,
                LayoutParams.FILL_PARENT));
        emptyView.setText(text);
        emptyView.setTextColor(Color.WHITE);
        emptyView.setTextSize(20);
        emptyView.setVisibility(View.GONE);
        emptyView.setGravity(Gravity.CENTER_VERTICAL
                | Gravity.CENTER_HORIZONTAL);

        return emptyView;
    }

Answer 1

This worked for me (got the solution from this question asked by William Remacle). What you might have missed is adding the created TextView to the ListView layout parent (second line of code from the bottom of the noItems method below):

In my ListFragment I used the following method to get a view for the empty view:

private TextView noItems(String text) {
    TextView emptyView = new TextView(getActivity());
    //Make sure you import android.widget.LinearLayout.LayoutParams;
    emptyView.setLayoutParams(new LayoutParams(LayoutParams.MATCH_PARENT,
            LayoutParams.MATCH_PARENT));
    //Instead of passing resource id here I passed resolved color 
    //That is, getResources().getColor((R.color.gray_dark))
    emptyView.setTextColor(getResources().getColor(R.color.gray_dark));
    emptyView.setText(text);
    emptyView.setTextSize(12);
    emptyView.setVisibility(View.GONE);
    emptyView.setGravity(Gravity.CENTER_VERTICAL
            | Gravity.CENTER_HORIZONTAL);

    //Add the view to the list view. This might be what you are missing
    ((ViewGroup) getListView().getParent()).addView(emptyView);

    return emptyView;
}

Then in the onStart() method of the the ListFragment set the the empty view:

@Override
public void onStart() {
    super.onStart();
    getListView().setEmptyView(
            noItems(getResources().getString(R.string.widget_empty)));
}