Custom controls/inflating an XML onto an Android layout?

Question

I have a standard layout and i have to populate it at runtime with a number of controls/views i.e. TextView / EditText depending on the number of products that come back from a REST service.

Of course the control I wish to add to the layout at runtime needs to contain a number of views (textview, edittext) etc. I was thinking a custom control to bring all the controls I need I am unsure.

The other idea I had was to inflate and existing XML into my layout but I am unsure if this is possible or if it was or would I control the ID names - inserting more than 1 would cause duplicate id's?

I will try and explain in detail what I am trying to do, we can wrap it in a for loop for test which would count form 1 to 5 hence 5 controls would get populated on my layout.

The custom controls would have a TextView which describes the product. The Edit text where the user can enter freely the amount in numbers using the virtual keyboard and a spinner control to the right of the EditText which would allow the increasing of the EdtiText value.

So all pretty simple eh ? :-) but of could I class all these controls as 1 specific view and I need to a number of them on my layout hence if there were 5 products there would be 5 custom controls, each custom control contain controls i.e. TextView, EditText and Spinner.

How can I accomplish this?

The examples I have seen have been inheriting from VIEW but I need my VIEW (CUSTOM CONTROL) to be a container for a number of other controls and then later be able to dynamically add this new custom control onto my Activity Layout.

Answer 1

What about using a ListView with custom adapter...
check http://www.ezzylearning.com/tutorial.aspx?tid=1763429
http://www.framentos.com/en/android-tutorial/2012/07/16/listview-in-android-using-custom-listadapter-and-viewcache/

Answer 2

You may want to use a ListView with a custom Adapter, and update the adapter with the information from the service.