What's the difference between BaseAdapter and ArrayAdapter?

Question

I want to know the difference between using BaseAdapter and ArrayAdapter.

I have been achieving what I want through ArrayAdapters.

Does it affect the performance of the ListView on the adapter interface in which it is implemented ?

And, the last question is, can i achieve anything doing with ListView using any of these Adapters, or, there are certain cases where specific adapter only can be used?

Answer 1

Here is the difference:

• BaseAdapter is a very generic adapter that allows you to do pretty much whatever you want. However, you have to do a bit more coding yourself to get it working.
• ArrayAdapter is a more complete implementation that works well for data in arrays or ArrayLists. Similarly, there is a related CursorAdapter that you should use if your data is in a Cursor. Both of these extend BaseAdapter.

If your data is in a specialized collection of some sort or if you don't want the default behavior that ArrayAdapter provides, you will likely want to extend BaseAdapter to get the flexibility you need.

The performance of each really depends on how you implement them or change their behavior. At their core, either one can be just as effective (especially considering that an ArrayAdapter is a BaseAdapter).

You can do pretty much whatever you want with any adapter, but keep in mind that BaseAdapter is abstract, so you can't use it directly.

Answer 2

BaseAdapter is abstract while ArrayAdapter extends BaseAdapter (it is a concrete implementation of a BaseAdapter). If you extends for ArrayAdapter you are inheriting all the ArrayAdapter's features and, override its implementation you can modify the ArrayAdapter behavior. If you extends BaseAdapter you must implements all the Abstract methods, that ArrayAdapter already implements.

Also, does it affects the performance of the ListView

no it does not.

And, the last question is, can i achieve anything doing with ListView using any of these Adapters, or, there are certain cases where specific adapter only can be used ?

If the implementation in the SDK fulfill your needs why you need to override it and re-invent the wheel?

The main difference between them is that BaseAdapter can not be instantiate while ArrayAdapter can