Question

I have an android game which loads a list of ‘games’ the user has against his friends. Similar to the “game words with friends”

To recreate this type of view, I originally used a listview, but because there different elements, ie, games, sections (their move – your move) etc, I don’t think I can do this kind of layout with purely a listview?

Has anyone done something similar? I might just use a scroll view and build up the layout dynamically, but my worry is that if a user has many games, performance will suffer.

Can anyone advise?

Answer 1

You should override the getView() method in your listview adapter.
It’s responsible for displaying each item’s layout. You will be able to do there something like:

if(position == YOUR_MOVE_POSITION) {

     // here hide ordinary elements, and set the ones you need to be visible
}

Look here for detailed info: link

Example: (how I see the solution)

This method is in your adapter class (which you use to populate the ListView, so you need to Override it with the code like below:

public View getView(int position, View convertView, ViewGroup parent) {

  final View v;

  if(position == 1) {  // here come instructions for 'header' no.1
    v = createViewFromResource(position, convertView, parent, mResource);

    // the widget you want to show in header:
    ImageView yourMoveImage = (ImageView) v.findViewById(R.id.your_move);

    // and here come widgets you don't want to show in headers:
    ImageView otherWidget = (ImageView) v.findViewById(R.id.other_widget);

    // then you set the visibility:
    yourMoveImage.setVisibility(View.VISIBLE);    // here is the key
    otherWidget.setVisibility(View.GONE);       // it may also be View.INVISIBLE (look up the official docs for details)   


  } else {

    if(position == 5){  // here come instructions for 'header' no.1


      v = createViewFromResource(position, convertView, parent, mResource);

      // the widget you want to show in header:
      ImageView theirMoveImage = (ImageView) v.findViewById(R.id.their_move);

      // and here come widgets you don't want to show in headers:
      ImageView otherWidget = (ImageView) v.findViewById(R.id.other_widget); 

      // then you set the visibility:
      yourMoveImage.setVisibility(View.VISIBLE);    // here is the key
      otherWidget.setVisibility(View.GONE);       // it may also be View.INVISIBLE (look up the official docs for details)   

    } else {

      // if it is the regular item, just show it as desribed in your XML:
      v = createViewFromResource(position, convertView, parent, mResource);
    }
  }

  return v;
}