Question

I can’t seem to get a customized divider, using a Drawable I’ve defined, to work when using a ListActivity and not creating a custom ListView. It almost seems like when the VM creates its own ListView for me, with the ListActivity, it uses a theme with the default divider provided; and if I try to provide one, no dividers appear in the ListView at all.

I know that I can create a custom ListView using XML and define android:divider on that ListView, and this does recognize my custom divider Drawable. But I would prefer to just let the ListActivity create its own ListView, if I can figure out how to get my own divider working on it.

Here’s the code I’m using now:

public class Categories extends ListActivity {

    @Override
    public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);

        final String[] OPTIONS = {
            "Hello",
            "Goodbye",
            "Good Morning",
            "Greetings",
            "Toodaloo"
        };

        ArrayAdapter<String> adapter = new ArrayAdapter<String>(
            this, android.R.layout.simple_list_item_1, OPTIONS);
        setListAdapter(adapter);

        ListView lv = getListView();
        PaintDrawable sage = new PaintDrawable(R.drawable.sage);
        lv.setDivider(sage);
        lv.setDividerHeight(1);
    }
}

Answer 1

I figured it out. The issue had nothing to do with the ListActivity generating a ListView for me. It was in how I was defining the divider in Java code.

There are two ways that I see to define the divider (border between ListView rows) on a ListView that is automatically inflated from a ListActivity, if you want to define the color in XML:

Method 1:

In res/values/colors.xml, put the following:

<resources>
 <color name="sage">#cceebb</color>
</resources>

In your ListActivity-extending class, do this:

ListView lv = getListView();
ColorDrawable sage = new ColorDrawable(this.getResources().getColor(R.color.sage));
lv.setDivider(sage);
lv.setDividerHeight(1);

---

Method 2:

In res/values/colors.xml:

<resources>
 <drawable name="sage">#cceebb</drawable>
</resources>

And in your class that extends ListActivity:

ListView lv = getListView();
ColorDrawable sage = new ColorDrawable(this.getResources().getColor(R.drawable.sage));
lv.setDivider(sage);
lv.setDividerHeight(1);