Question

In the Notepad example, they display a list of titles. How would you change it to display a second line with the body text in a smaller font?

Here is the relevant code:

    private void fillData() {
    // Get all of the rows from the database and create the item list
    Cursor notesCursor = mDbHelper.fetchAllNotes();
    startManagingCursor(notesCursor);

    // Create an array to specify the fields we want to display in the list (only TITLE)
    String[] from = new String[]{NotesDbAdapter.KEY_TITLE};

    // and an array of the fields we want to bind those fields to (in this case just text1)
    int[] to = new int[]{R.id.text1};

    // Now create a simple cursor adapter and set it to display
    SimpleCursorAdapter notes =
            new SimpleCursorAdapter(this, R.layout.notes_row, notesCursor, from, to);
    setListAdapter(notes);
}

And this is notes_row.xml:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<TextView android:id="@+id/text1" xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:padding="10dp"
android:minWidth="100dp"/>

The comments clearly state that it only displays the title. I wish it gave me some hints as to how to display the body text as well. (Let’s not discuss whether that’s a good idea. Let’s just assume that that needs to be done, because I’m trying to adapt the Notepad example to my own app.)

Answer 1

Simply add another textview to your row:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<TextView android:id="@+id/text1" xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:padding="10dp"
android:minWidth="100dp"/>
<TextView android:id="@+id/body" xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:layout_width="wrap_content"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:padding="10dp"
    android:minWidth="100dp"
    android:fontSize="20dp"/>

And change your method to the following:

private void fillData() {
    // Get all of the rows from the database and create the item list
    Cursor notesCursor = mDbHelper.fetchAllNotes();
    startManagingCursor(notesCursor);

    // Create an array to specify the fields we want to display in the list (only TITLE)
    String[] from = new String[]{NotesDbAdapter.KEY_TITLE, NotesDbAdapter.KEY_BODY};

    // and an array of the fields we want to bind those fields to (in this case just text1)
    int[] to = new int[]{R.id.text1, R.id.body};

    // Now create a simple cursor adapter and set it to display
    SimpleCursorAdapter notes =
            new SimpleCursorAdapter(this, R.layout.notes_row, notesCursor, from, to);
    setListAdapter(notes);
}

Please note that it may not be NotesDbAdapter.KEY_BODY to retrieve the body column, you should be able to look in your NotesDbAdapter class, at the constant that refers to the body column name and use that.

Also – play with the font size some (android:fontSize=) … 20dp may be VERY small to the point where you can’t even see it (I haven’t tested this).