Is there a super simple List / ListAdapter example out there for android

Question

I have a web service that returns a super simple list of objects

MyObject[] data = webServiceCall();

MyObject has 1 field i want to display, "Name" (i.e. data[0].Name )

How can i turn this into an activity that lists just the name of these objects in a scrollable listActivity on Android. I am getting really confused with Cursors and am not sure if I need Cursors and I"m not sure what kind of adapter to implement (BaseAdapter, SimpleAdapter etc)

So i guess i'm looking for three things,

the activity, the adapter and the layout.xml

Just trying to figure this android stuff out, definitely a noob here

Answer 1

so i think i figured it out with a little inspiration from RobGThai's answer, i'm posting the code for anyone else to see, i guess i didn't really use a custom adapter

This is the super simple example that got me started, so once i had this, I made sure my "MyObject" had a toString() method on it to show properly in the list and i passed the MyObject[] array into the "new ArrayAdapter" constructor instead of listItems

FooList.java

import android.app.ListActivity;
import android.os.Bundle;
import android.widget.ArrayAdapter;

public class FooList extends ListActivity {
    String[] listItems = {"item 1", "item 2 ", "list", "android", "item 3", "foobar", "bar", }; 
    @Override
     public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
         super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
         setContentView(R.layout.temp);
         setListAdapter(new ArrayAdapter(this,  android.R.layout.simple_list_item_1, listItems));
     }

}

the layout xml i used (temp.xml)

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:orientation="vertical" android:layout_width="fill_parent"
    android:layout_height="fill_parent">
    <ListView android:id="@android:id/list" android:layout_width="fill_parent"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content" />
    <TextView android:id="@android:id/empty" android:layout_width="wrap_content"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:text="Empty set" />
</LinearLayout>

Answer 2

make your Activity extends ListActivity as well.

Then this should help you get started.

Object[] sArray = {"This", "is", 3.5, true, 2, "for", "bla"};
ArrayAdapter adp = new ArrayAdapter(this, android.R.layout.simple_list_item_1, sArray);
setListAdapter(adp);

The second parameters can be change to your preferred layout. See API document for further information.

Answer 3

You can also attach an AlertDialog to the ListView when user clicks on a ListItem. I am including a working code below in case anyone is trying the same thing,

final ListView v = getListView();
v.setOnItemClickListener(new OnItemClickListener() {

public void onItemClick(final AdapterView<?> parentView, View view, int position,
        long id) {
    final String fileName = (String) parentView.getItemAtPosition(position);
    new AlertDialog.Builder(parentView.getContext()).setTitle("Upload").setMessage("Upload " + fileName +"?")
        .setPositiveButton("OK", new DialogInterface.OnClickListener() {

            public void onClick(DialogInterface di, int arg1) {
                //do something here...
            }
        }).setNegativeButton("Cancel", new DialogInterface.OnClickListener() {

            public void onClick(DialogInterface di, int arg1) {
                di.dismiss();                           
            }
        }).show();
}   
});

The key is that you need to pass your enclosing activity's context to the dialog. I found that out when getApplicationContext() failed with a strange error message.