Question

I’ve searched far and wide for this answer and can’t seem to find it.

I’m looking to populate a very simple 3 line listview, no more then 5-6 words per line at the most inside of my android app.

I’m currently using a base adapter and a string array to enable the actual text to show up on the screen.

I want to have the ability to update the information inside of my listview remotely using
some sort of means whether that’s xml, SQLite, plain text, etc and then have that hosted file populate my listview.

Can anyone here help me to figure out how to do this? I’m still pretty new to android development so please go easy on me. Hopefully this question wont be too hard answer and also not too difficult to enable for a newbie like myself.

Answer 1

If the most you’re going to ever have in there is just 3 lines of text, I think a SQLite DB may be a bit much for your situation. I’d look into using a Typed Array.

Here’s a link to the Android Dev Guide on this subject:

http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/resources/more-resources.html#TypedArray

Here’s a code sample:

public class YourListActivity extends ListActivity {
    String[] mTestArray;

    @Override
    protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {

        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);

        // Create an ArrayAdapter to contain your items
        ArrayAdapter<String> adapter;

        mTestArray = getResources().getStringArray(R.array.yourArray);    

        // Assign your array to an adapter with your layout file 
        adapter = new ArrayAdapter<String>(this, android.R.layout.simple_list_item_1, mTestArray);

        // Assign the adapter to this ListActivity
        setListAdapter(adapter);
    }
}

EDIT

Just realized that your data will be on a remote server, so this approach may not work for you, but it can still give you an idea of how to take your data once received from your remote server and place it into a ListView.