Overriding Android ListView onItemClick causing item to be selected (checked)

Question

I am trying to better understand the internal functioning of ListView as it pertains to selecting one or multiple items- it's actually amazing how difficult it was for me to even get this far in my understanding.

By default a regular click on a ListView item is setting the 'checked' state for that item to true. How do I override this behavior so this selection does not happen?

And more fundamentally, what are the underlying ListView mechanics here? Is the row view's default onClick then calling the ListView's onItemClick/LongClick handlers, or how does this click handling get sequenced?

I do want to allow a choiceMode of multipleChoice, but I only want to select it onItemLongClick. Overriding onItemClick does not change this behavior, and overriding the row view's onClick handler in the adapter getView() function seems to prevent the ListView onItemClick and onItemLongClick from ever happening.

Below is more detailed context on my application

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My goal is to have my ListActivity display a ListView, which functions as follows:

• Clicking an item performs a non-selecting action (expands the row to show more info)
• Long clicking an item selects it. Selecting an item is indicated by highlighting the background of the row (as in the Gmail app)
• You can select multiple items

My application structure is:

• Activity is an extension of ListActivity
• Adapter is an extension of ArrayAdapter<>
• ListView row layouts are completely custom layouts (not any sort of built-in ListView row layout)

My understanding of the built-in functionality for ListView has me to the point where I am

• setting choiceMode to multipleChoice
• using the ListView 'checked' functionality for making and tracking the selections
• using a custom selector as an 'activatedBackgroundIndicator' to show the highlighting (example here)

Answer 1

Keep an ArrayList to maintain ListView items selected position. When a ListView item is selected check in that ArrayList whether item position is in ArrayList or not. If item is not in ArrayList change state of Item to checked else change state to unchecked and remove the position object from ArrayList. This worked for me.