Question

I have a custom adapter. Within my getView(), I’m trying to populate “holder.contact” with a list of my contacts, but with no success. I do have this method of populating my ListView with contacts, but it disrupts the functionality of my CheckBoxes. This code is outside of my CustomAdapter class:

public void populateContactList() {
    // Build adapter with contact entries
    Cursor cursor = getContacts();
    String[] fields = new String[] {
            ContactsContract.Data.DISPLAY_NAME       
    };

    SimpleCursorAdapter adapter = new SimpleCursorAdapter(this, R.layout.contact_entry, cursor,
            fields, new int[] {R.id.contactEntryText});    
    lv.setAdapter(adapter);    
} // END POPULATECONTACTLIST

public Cursor getContacts()
{ 
    // Run query
    Uri uri = ContactsContract.Contacts.CONTENT_URI;
    String[] projection = new String[] {
            ContactsContract.Contacts._ID,
            ContactsContract.Contacts.DISPLAY_NAME        
    };

    String selection = ContactsContract.Contacts.IN_VISIBLE_GROUP + " = '" +
            (false ? "0" : "1") + "'";
    String[] selectionArgs = null;
    String sortOrder = ContactsContract.Contacts.DISPLAY_NAME + " COLLATE LOCALIZED ASC";

    return managedQuery(uri, projection, selection, selectionArgs, sortOrder);
} // END GETCONTACTS 

But I’m trying to define it within here, but with no success (Custom Adapter class):

@Override
public View getView(final int position, View convertView, ViewGroup parent)
{
    View rowView = convertView;
    ViewHolder holder = null;

    if (rowView == null) {
        LayoutInflater inflater = (LayoutInflater)context.getSystemService(
                                           Context.LAYOUT_INFLATER_SERVICE);
        // HERE I AM INFLATING LISTVIEW LAYOUT.
        rowView = inflater.inflate(R.layout.contact_entry, null, false);
        holder = new ViewHolder();
        holder.photo = (ImageView) rowView.findViewById(R.id.iv_contactPic);
        holder.contact = (TextView) rowView.findViewById(R.id.contactEntryText);
        holder.tv = (TextView) rowView.findViewById(R.id.SMSCounttext);
        holder.cb = (CheckBox) rowView.findViewById(R.id.cb_contactHistoryChk);


        rowView.setTag(holder);

    } else {
        holder = (ViewHolder) rowView.getTag();
    }

Is there a way to apply my populateContactList() method within the getView()?

My constructor looks like this. “elements” is already used by another textview:

public CustomAdapter(Context context, int type, ArrayList<String> elements){
    super(context, type, elements);

Answer 1

Your question is a little ambiguous. You have the populateContactList() which binds a Cursor with Contacts data to a SimpleCursorAdapter and you want to use this method in the getView() method of another custom Adapter(if this is the case, don’t do this)? Or you want to use your own adapter and bind to it the data with the contacts(if this is the case, then use the results from the query, cursor, with your own Adapter)?

You don’t say what type of Adapter your custom Adapter extends. If it is a Cursor based Adapter, things are easy and you can use the bindView and newView to access the cursor data(and you pass the Cursor from getContacts() in the constructor(to the super class)). Otherwise put the data from the Cursor you get with getContacts() in a structure like an ArrayList and use that as the data for the adapter. (I would recommend to go with the first option).

Also, it’s your job to maintain the status of CheckBoxes from your row layout(there are many questions here on how to do this).

Edit:

    ArrayList<String> names = new ArrayList<String>();
    Cursor cursor = getContacts();
    while (cursor.moveToNext()) {
         names.add(cursor.getString(cursor.getColumnIndex(ContactsContract.Data.DISPLAY_NAME )));

}

Edit:
Use the elements ArrayList and bind it to the rows:

    //...
    private ArrayList<String> data;

    public CustomAdapter(Context context, int type, ArrayList<String> elements){
        super(context, type, elements);
        this.data = elements;
    }

    public int getCount() {
        return data.size();  
    }

    @Override
    public View getView(final int position, View convertView, ViewGroup parent) {
        View rowView = convertView;
        ViewHolder holder = null;

        if (rowView == null) {
            LayoutInflater inflater = (LayoutInflater)context.getSystemService(
                                               Context.LAYOUT_INFLATER_SERVICE);
            // HERE I AM INFLATING LISTVIEW LAYOUT.
            rowView = inflater.inflate(R.layout.contact_entry, parent, false); //<= use parent instead of null
            holder = new ViewHolder();
            holder.photo = (ImageView) rowView.findViewById(R.id.iv_contactPic);
            holder.contact = (TextView) rowView.findViewById(R.id.contactEntryText);
            holder.tv = (TextView) rowView.findViewById(R.id.SMSCounttext);
            holder.cb = (CheckBox) rowView.findViewById(R.id.cb_contactHistoryChk);
            rowView.setTag(holder);
        } else {
            holder = (ViewHolder) rowView.getTag();
        }
        //bind the data to the row views
        String contactName = data.get(position);
        holder.contact.setText(contactName);
        // other stuff you might do to build thw row
//...