keeping bottom element of ListView visible when keyboard appears

Question

I have a LinearLayout containing both a ListView and an EditText. When the On-Screen keyboard is launched by touching the EditText, the ListView resizes so that only the top few elements remain visible.

The context that the ListView is being used in has the bottom few elements being more visually relevant than the top, and so I'd like for it to resize so that the bottom remains visible, rather than the top. Any pointers?

(Incidentally, the current fix I'm using involves using smoothScrollToPosition, but the laggy scroll behaviour makes this undesirable)

Answer 1

I just solved a similar issue this morning, and thought I'd post my result here for the benefit of future searchers. My issue was that scrolling to the bottom wasn't helping since I was calling it before the view actually changed size. The solution? Wait until it does change size by using a GlobalLayoutListener

Steps: 1) implement the following method in the activity holding the listview

public void scrollToBottom(){
    //I think this is supposed to run on the UI thread
    listView.setSelection(mAdapter.getCount() - 1);
}

2) create the following class

public class OnGlobalLayoutListenerWithScrollToBottom implements OnGlobalLayoutListener{

    private boolean scroll;
    private OnScrollToBottomListener listener;
    public interface OnScrollToBottomListener{
        public void scrollToBottom();
    }

    public OnGlobalLayoutListenerWithScrollToBottom(OnScrollToBottomListener listener){
        this.listener = listener;
    }

    @Override
    public void onGlobalLayout() {
        if(scroll){
            listener.scrollToBottom();
            scroll = false;
        }
    }

    /**
     * Lets the listener know to request a scroll to bottom the next time it is layed out
     */
    public void scrollToBottomAtNextOpportunity(){
        scroll = true;
    }

};

3) In your activity, implement the interface from this class. Then, in your activity, create an instance of this OnGlobalLayoutListener and set it as the listener for your listView

    //make sure your class implements OnGlobalLayoutListenerWithScrollToBottom.OnScrollToBottomListener
    listViewLayoutListener = new OnGlobalLayoutListenerWithScrollToBottom(this);
    listView.getViewTreeObserver().addOnGlobalLayoutListener(listViewLayoutListener);

4) In your activity, before you make changes that will affect the size of list view, such as showing and hiding other views or adding stuff to the listview, simply let the layout listener know to scroll at the next opportunity

listViewLayoutListener.scrollToBottomAtNextOpportunity();