RecyclerView vs ViewPager

Question

Currently, I am exploring the option of displaying data from a database by swiping left to right and also allowing users add and remove data from any position in the data array. I found out that there are 2 possible solutions to do this. One is a RecyclerView with horizontal scroll and the other is a ViewPager with a FragmentStatePagerAdapter . Which is more efficient? In terms of Memory usage and Ease of implementation?

Thanks.

Answer 1

I would say they are comparable in terms of memory usage and ease of implementation. Where they differ most is in the interaction they provide to the user.

ViewPager is designed to show one item at a time. The visible item takes up full width of the ViewPager. You can only swipe one item at a time and scrolling always snaps to showing one item in the centre – you're never left in an in-between position partially showing two items.

RecyclerView with a horizontal layout manager on the other hand can have items of any width – you could be showing many items at once or you could have items wider that RecyclerView's width or you could match their widths to mimic ViewPager. You can freely scroll – you are not limited to one item width or RecyclerView's width, you can do a fling gesture to scroll big distances. And there's no snapping – when the scroll finishes there's no aligning items to the centre or any of the sides.

As you see there are a few differences. I would recommend you to choose your widget based on the UI you want to achieve. If you want ViewPager's behaviour (one item visible at a time, swipe limited to one item and snapping to show the full item) then go with a ViewPager. It's possible but not trivial to replicate this behaviour using a RecycleView. I would definitely say it is way more difficult to use RecyclerView if you want to make it behave like ViewPager. Conversely it's pretty much impossible to customise ViewPager's behaviour, so if that's not what you want then you definitely should use a RecyclerView.