Adding bottom margin to ListView last element

Question

I need to add to add ListView with complicated items background: different for even/odd and rounded corners at the top and bottom. It looks like this:

I have implemented all this stuff via level-list, but there is one more thing I want to do. Now the bottom item is near the bottom of the screen. It is better to add some space.

I don't want to add bottom margin to ListView, I need margin only for last item.

The ways I see to do this:

Footer

A kind of hack – add footer with empty TextView to ListView. But footers are quite unstable things, they usually disappear after notifyDataSetChanged and there is no way to get them back

Image with transparent pixels

I asked designer to add transparent pixels to bottom background resource. Unfortunately, in this case vertical centering is completely broken. For example, there is 9patch like this:

And layout like this:

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

<RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
             android:layout_width="match_parent"
             android:layout_height="match_parent"
        >
    <!-- View with background with transparent pixels on bottom -->
    <LinearLayout android:layout_width="match_parent" android:layout_height="wrap_content"
                  android:id="@+id/item"
                  android:background="@drawable/some_bgr"
                  android:padding="10dp"
            >
        <TextView android:layout_width="0dp" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:layout_weight="1"
                  android:text="Title"
                  android:layout_gravity="center"
                  android:textSize="18sp"
                />
        <TextView android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content"
                  android:text="Detail"
                  android:layout_gravity="center"
                  android:textSize="18sp"
                />
    </LinearLayout>

    <!-- Just for marking place took by view -->
    <FrameLayout android:layout_width="match_parent" android:layout_height="match_parent"
                 android:layout_below="@id/item"
                 android:background="#88ff55"
            />
</RelativeLayout>

The result:

As you see, centering is not working. Unfortunately. (BTW, if specify this 9patch as background for TextView, centering works good. If you know any article, explaining this, please let me know.)

Add bottom margin to last item in Adapter implementation

That should work, but for unknown reason I still can't get it work. I don't like this way, because I don't like to modify dimensions in code.

So

There is already imaginary way – construct some XML drawable with particular bitmap and margin. According to drawables concept it should be possible, but I can't find implementation. May be somebody knows?

Any other ideas?

Answer 1

In your ListView, set a paddingBottom and clipToPadding="false".

  <ListView
      android:layout_width="match_parent"
      android:layout_height="match_parent"
      android:paddingBottom="8dp"
      android:clipToPadding="false"
      android:scrollbarStyle="outsideOverlay"/>

• This also works for RecyclerView.

• Only use android:scrollbarStyle="outsideOverlay" if you want the scroll bar to not overflow into the padded area.

Answer 2

add an empty footer in your list like this:

TextView empty = new TextView(this);
empty.setHeight(150);
listview.addFooterView(empty);

Answer 3

you can also do it from code if you want, for example here I react to to EditText different situations:

   if(s.toString().length()>0)
   {
      contacts_lv.setClipToPadding(false);
      contacts_lv.setPadding(0,0,0,270*screenDensity);
   }
   else
   {
      contacts_lv.setClipToPadding(true);
      contacts_lv.setPadding(0,0,0,0);
   }

Answer 4

Clocksmith's answer is the best and pretty clever. You can also create an empty footer view.

Answer 5

Add these two lines in your listView XML code:

android:transcriptMode="alwaysScroll"  
android:stackFromBottom="true"

Answer 6

Another solution might be that you make a mock view with certain height.

In your adapter in getViewCount return 2.

In getCount return yourData.size+1.

In getViewType check if the element is last element return 2;

Use this type in getView to populate the mockview.

Answer 7

I guess you want to add margin only to last item:

So you can do in this manner, in your getview method the index of the list item and check if its the last item, then progrmatically add margin to the view.