ListView Empty Message

When I first needed to set a message on a ListView that was empty, I tried different methods, but none of them worked, except the one that I will describe in this tutorial. So let’s start.

When you want to show a message to the user when the ListView is empty, you have to keep in mind the following 3 steps:

  • In the xml where the ListView is declared, create a TextView (the TextView can be inside a LinearLayout if you want) right below the ListView
  • Set the TextView’s id as “emptyElement”
  • And inside the activity, set the setEmptyView() property to the ListView

1.  Create an xml which will hold the ListView and name it “my_activity” and an activity called “MyActivity”.

2. Now, in the just created xml “my_activity”, you will have to set the ListView.  And right below the ListView, you will have to add a TextView. This will be used to display the empty message.

Important: The TextView must have as id the following name: “emptyElement”. This name is mandatory. The message won’t be displayed if you use another name.

This is how “my_activity” xml should look like:

<RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="match_parent"
    android:paddingLeft="@dimen/activity_horizontal_margin"
    android:paddingRight="@dimen/activity_horizontal_margin"
    android:paddingTop="@dimen/activity_vertical_margin"
    android:paddingBottom="@dimen/activity_vertical_margin"
    tools:context=".MyActivity">

    <ListView
        android:layout_width="match_parent"
        android:layout_height="match_parent"
        android:id="@+id/listView"/>

    <TextView android:layout_width="wrap_content"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:id="@+id/emptyElement"
        android:text="The list is empty"
        android:textStyle="bold"
        android:textSize="15sp"
        android:visibility="gone"
        android:layout_centerInParent="true"
          android:textColor="@android:color/darker_gray"/>

</RelativeLayout>

3. Create an xml for displaying items (when the list is not empty), and name it “list_item”.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

<LinearLayout
    xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:orientation="horizontal"
    android:layout_width="fill_parent"
    android:layout_height="fill_parent"
    android:id="@+id/list_item"
    android:gravity="center_vertical">


    <TextView android:layout_width="wrap_content"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:id="@+id/list_item_text_view"
        android:textSize="20sp"
        android:padding="10dp"
        android:layout_marginLeft="5dp"/>

</LinearLayout>

4. Create a new Java class for the custom adapter which will be used by the ListView and name “MyCustomAdapter”. The code for the adapter is written below:

import android.content.Context;
import android.view.LayoutInflater;
import android.view.View;
import android.view.ViewGroup;
import android.widget.BaseAdapter;
import android.widget.TextView;

import java.util.ArrayList;


public class MyCustomAdapter extends BaseAdapter {
    private ArrayList<String> mListItems;
    private LayoutInflater mLayoutInflater;

    public MyCustomAdapter(Context context, ArrayList<String> arrayList){

        mListItems = arrayList;

        //get the layout inflater
        mLayoutInflater = (LayoutInflater) context.getSystemService(Context.LAYOUT_INFLATER_SERVICE);
    }

    @Override
    public int getCount() {
        //getCount() represents how many items are in the list
        return mListItems.size();
    }

    @Override
    //get the data of an item from a specific position
    //i represents the position of the item in the list
    public Object getItem(int i) {
        return null;
    }

    @Override
    //get the position id of the item from the list
    public long getItemId(int i) {
        return 0;
    }

    @Override

    public View getView(int position, View view, ViewGroup viewGroup) {

        // create a ViewHolder reference
        ViewHolder holder;

        //check to see if the reused view is null or not, if is not null then reuse it
        if (view == null) {
            holder = new ViewHolder();

            view = mLayoutInflater.inflate(R.layout.list_item, null);
            holder.itemName = (TextView) view.findViewById(R.id.list_item_text_view);

            // the setTag is used to store the data within this view
            view.setTag(holder);
        } else {
            // the getTag returns the viewHolder object set as a tag to the view
            holder = (ViewHolder)view.getTag();
        }

        //get the string item from the position "position" from array list to put it on the TextView
        String stringItem = mListItems.get(position);
        if (stringItem != null) {
            if (holder.itemName != null) {
                //set the item name on the TextView
                holder.itemName.setText(stringItem);
            }
        }

        //this method must return the view corresponding to the data at the specified position.
        return view;

    }

    /**
     * Static class used to avoid the calling of "findViewById" every time the getView() method is called,
     * because this can impact to your application performance when your list is too big. The class is static so it
     * cache all the things inside once it's created.
     */
    private static class ViewHolder {

        protected TextView itemName;

    }
}

5. Now go to MyActivity class and add the code below:

import android.app.Activity;
import android.os.Bundle;
import android.widget.ListView;

import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;


public class MyActivity extends Activity {

    @Override
    protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        setContentView(R.layout.my_activity);

        ListView listView = (ListView) findViewById(R.id.listView);

        // Create an empty array list of strings
        List<String> items = new ArrayList<String>();

        // Set the adapter
        MyCustomAdapter adapter = new MyCustomAdapter(items);
        listView.setAdapter(adapter);

        // Set the emptyView to the ListView
        listView.setEmptyView(findViewById(R.id.emptyElement));
    }
}

 

And this is it. Now, if you run the app you should see something like this:

ListView empty message

And if you populate the ArrayList of Strings, the message will disappear and the list items will be displayed.  (You can use a for statement in MyActivity where the empty array was created in order to populate the array of strings)

for (int i = 0; i < 5; i++) {
            items.add("Item " + i);
        }

populated listView

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