Question

I have a bunch of ArrayLists filled with data. All I want to do is populate the spinners using the arraylists. In other SO questions people create their own Adapters and store the ArrayList as a field, but I don’t need to do that.

I just want to populate the spinner. I don’t think theres something this easy, but is there anything resembling

mySpinner.populate( myList );

Answer 1

Simply use the built-in ArrayAdapter, you don’t have to write a custom Adapter.

List<String> list = new ArrayList<String>();
// Fill list with strings
...

ArrayAdapter<String> adapter = new ArrayAdapter<String>(this, android.R.layout.simple_spinner_item, list);
adapter.setDropDownViewResource(android.R.layout.simple_spinner_dropdown_item);
Spinner spinner = (Spinner) findViewById(R.id.spinner);
spinner.setAdapter(adapter);

You don’t specify what data types you are using, but it doesn’t matter: you can easily change the ArrayAdapter’s subtype to <Integer>, <Double>, or even a custom class <Kittens> (as long as you define the custom classes toString() method.)