Does ListView automatically recycle views?

Question

I'm new to android programming, and I've been reading a lot about it lately. One of the features of ListView, if I understood it right, is that it recycle views and just replaces it with new data when an item is off the screen.

And just a few minutes ago, I was reading up about endless scrolling, and RecyclerView has been one of the popular choices to implement such a feature. So I looked up RecyclerView, and in this video, it is mentioned that RecyclerView recycles a view automatically to reuse it for new data (as a way to contrast its difference with ListView).

Did I misunderstand ListView about its recycling mechanism? Or if it does recycle, how do you actually implement (or how do you know you are implementing) it?

no, it doesnt, but it gives you recycled view in `Adapter#getView` method as a second `View convertView` parameter — pskink, Jul 14 '16 at 06:53

score 3 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:00

RecyclerView does recycling automatically. In order to make ListView recycle items you will need to do this modification inside of adapter class.

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

    ViewHolder holder;

    if (convertView == null) {
        //brand new
        convertView = LayoutInflater.from(mContext).inflate(R.layout.days_list_item, null);
        holder = new ViewHolder();

        // below is variables that will be different in your case
        holder.numberOfDays = (TextView) convertView.findViewById(R.id.eventDays);
        holder.sinceOrUntil = (TextView) convertView.findViewById(R.id.eventType);
        holder.eventTitle = (TextView) convertView.findViewById(R.id.eventTitle);
        holder.daysText = (TextView) convertView.findViewById(R.id.DaysText);

        convertView.setTag(holder);
    }
    else {
        //reusing item
        holder = (ViewHolder) convertView.getTag();
    }

    // rest of the code
}

For more details refer to this link.

Does ListView automatically recycle views?

1 Answers1