How to fully replace listView/GridView with RecyclerView?

Question

I've noticed that the new RecyclerView class, even though it makes things a bit cleaner, is lacking a lot of functionality that I'm familiar with:

1. dividers, but this can be solved by looking at this post or this one
2. "footerDividersEnabled"
3. "headerDividersEnabled"
4. "listSelector" , but maybe I should simply set it per view ?
5. "fastScrollEnabled"
6. "smoothScrollbar"
7. "textFilterEnabled"
8. I've also tried to find out if there is a new way to use the new class with filtering (as done with ListView by implementing Filterable). I couldn't find out if there is such a thing
9. "tools:listitem" , to show the items on the UI designer.

Those are what I use, but maybe there are others that I missed.

Is there any tutorial or some guidelines of how to replace each of those things?

Answer 1

ok, I think I've found some solutions to what I wrote about:

1. dividers - the links I've given can probably help (here, here and here).
2. "footerDividersEnabled" - probably like #1, but even if you don't have it, you could always add a divider to the layout of the footer.
3. "headerDividersEnabled" - same as #2.
4. "listSelector" - should be done to the item views .
5. "fastScrollEnabled" - no solution is available for this, except for this library I've found, which was an answer for my post here.
6. "smoothScrollbar" - should be a feature request for #5. I think it's already smooth, but I'm not sure.
7. "textFilterEnabled" - sadly, you need to handle it yourself. create a thread pool of size 1, or manage your own thread (or use AsyncTask, in case the work is relatively short), and let it do the filtering for you.
8. Filterable - same as #7
9. "tools:listitem" - not available, but I think you could extend from RecyclerView and add it. You will however have to put some work, as RecyclerView doesn't know how to layout the views.

Answer 2

I would recommend you go look at some of the library's for the RecyclerView. You can find a lot of library's at https://android-arsenal.com/.

Also you can implement your own functionality in the RecyclerView and the Adapter for the RecyclerView. Just extend the RecyclerView and build on that.

I recommend that you read the source code for the RecyclerView at https://android.googlesource.com/platform/frameworks/support/+/refs/heads/master/v7/recyclerview/src/android/support/v7/widget/RecyclerView.java.

Answer 3

No tutorials that I know of, but the sources for ListView are public! There's no better way to learn than this... For example: I recently implemented filtering just like ListView does and it work like a charm. Plus, if you do it well, you only need to do it once and can re-apply it everywhere!