Showing empty view when ListView is empty

Question

When you extend FragmentActivity or Activity and not ListActivity, you'll want to take a look at:

ListView.setEmptyView()

It should be like this:

<TextView android:id="@android:id/empty"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="match_parent"
    android:text="No Results" />

Note the id attribute.

As appsthatmatter says, in the layout something like:

<ListView android:id="@+id/listView" ... />
<TextView android:id="@+id/emptyElement" ... />

and in the linked Activity:

this.listView = (ListView) findViewById(R.id.listView);
this.listView.setEmptyView(findViewById(R.id.emptyElement));

Does also work with a GridView...

I tried all the above solutions.I came up solving the issue.Here I am posting the full solution.

The xml file:

<RelativeLayout
    android:id="@+id/header_main_page_clist1"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="match_parent"
    android:layout_margin="20dp"
    android:paddingBottom="10dp"
    android:background="#ffffff" >

    <ListView
        android:id="@+id/lv_msglist"
        android:layout_width="match_parent"
        android:layout_height="match_parent"
        android:divider="@color/divider_color"
        android:dividerHeight="1dp" />

    <TextView
        android:id="@+id/emptyElement"
        android:layout_width="wrap_content"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:layout_centerInParent="true"
        android:text="NO MESSAGES AVAILABLE!"
        android:textColor="#525252"
        android:textSize="19.0sp"
        android:visibility="gone" />
</RelativeLayout>

The textView ("@+id/emptyElement") is the placeholder for the empty listview.

Here is the code for java page:

lvmessage=(ListView)findViewById(R.id.lv_msglist);
lvmessage.setAdapter(adapter);
lvmessage.setEmptyView(findViewById(R.id.emptyElement));

Remember to place the emptyView after binding the adapter to listview.Mine was not working for first time and after I moved the setEmptyView after the setAdapter it is now working.

Output:

I highly recommend you to use ViewStubs like this

<FrameLayout
    android:layout_width="fill_parent"
    android:layout_height="0dp"
    android:layout_weight="1" >

    <ListView
        android:id="@android:id/list"
        android:layout_width="fill_parent"
        android:layout_height="fill_parent" />

    <ViewStub
        android:id="@android:id/empty"
        android:layout_width="wrap_content"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:layout_gravity="center"
        android:layout="@layout/empty" />
</FrameLayout>

See the full example from Cyril Mottier