When I am developing an Android Application ,I want to use a method of higther API in lower android version. How to do it?

Question

When I am developing an Android Application ,I want to use a method of higther API in lower android version?? the following is a method of ListView

public void smoothScrollToPosition(int position)  Since API Level 8,

but I want to use this method in in a lower android version ,for example ,API 5 how to do it ???? thank you

Answer 1

Basically you can't do it. But, you can use it in upper version and provide some backwards compatibility in your code for older versions :

@TargetApi(Build.VERSION_CODES.FROYO)
private void allowSmoothScrollIfSupported() {
    if ( Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= Build.VERSION_CODES.FROYO ) {
        list.smoothScrollToPosition(position)
    } else {
        list.scrollToPosition(position)
    }
}

This method will only be executed on API versions 8 and above, and will not crash below : it will fallback on an old API (scrollToPosition).

and in your AndroidManifest.xml you can indicate that your target the newest api but support all of them from 5 and up :

 <uses-sdk
        android:minSdkVersion="5"
        android:targetSdkVersion="17" />

Answer 2

Alternatively to the @snicolas's soltution, you can use reflection:

    try {       
        Method smoothScrollToPositionMethod = ListView.class.getMethod("smoothScrollToPosition", int.class);
        smoothScrollToPositionMethod.invoke(list, position);
    } catch (NoSuchMethodException e) {
         list.scrollToPosition(position)
    }