Question

I’m adding a footer and header view to a ListView by using the methods setHeaderView() and setFooterView() and a ViewInflater. That works quite well.

But how could I prevent the header or footer view from firing onListItemClick events? Of course I can catch the event and check whether it came from a header or footer, but this only solves one part of the problem, as header and footer got still focused when clicked.

Answer 1

Simply use the ListView#addHeaderView(View v, Object data, boolean isSelectable);
and matching addFooter() method.

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The purpose of Object data parameter.

The ListView source code describes the data parameter as:

The data backing the view. This is returned from ListAdapter#getItem(int).

Which means if I use listView.getAdapter().getItem(0); it will return the data Object from our header.

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I’ll elaborate this with an example:

listView = (ListView) findViewById(R.id.list);
String[] array = new String[] {"one", "two", "three"};
adapter = new ArrayAdapter<String>(this, android.R.layout.simple_list_item_1, array);

Next let’s add a header and set the adapter:

listView.addHeaderView(view, "Potato", false);
listView.setAdapter(adapter);

Later if we ask:

Log.v("ListAdapter", listView.getAdapter().getItem(0));  // output: "Potato" 
Log.v("ArrayAdapter", adapter.getItem(0));               // output: "one"