android - Custom ListView adapter, strange ImageView behavior

Question

I have a custom ListView Adapter, with which I'm creating rows for a list. My problem is though, that it doesn't seem to be distinguishing the ImageViews, from each other. It seems to be randomly picking ImageViews to chuck into place as I scroll up and down. The text information (omitted from this snippet) does not break. It works as one would expect.

Here is the relevant method of my Adapter:

  public View getView( int position, View convertView, ViewGroup parent )
  {
    View v = convertView;

    if( v == null )
    {
      LayoutInflater vi = (LayoutInflater)getContext().getSystemService(Context.LAYOUT_INFLATER_SERVICE);
      v = vi.inflate( R.layout.generic_row, null );
    }

    // find the image
    ImageView favImage = (ImageView)v.findViewById( R.id.toggle_favorite );

   // when clicked...
   favImage.setOnClickListener( new OnClickListener() {

     @Override
     public void onClick( View v )
     {
       // make the gray star a yellow one
       int newImage = R.drawable.ic_star_yellow_embossed;
       ((ImageView)v).setImageBitmap(BitmapFactory.decodeResource(getContext().getResources(), newImage));
     }

   });

  return v;
  }

Answer 1

That behavior appears because the ListView recycles the row views as you scroll the list up and down, and because of this you get rows that were acted on by the user(the image was changed) in position were the image should be unmodified. To avoid this you'll have to somehow hold the status of the ImageView for every row in the list and use this status to set up the correct image in the getView() method. Because you didn't say how exactly did you implement your adapter I will show you a simple example.

First of all you should store your the statuses of the ImageView. I used an ArrayList<Boolean> as a member of the custom adapter, if the position(corresponding to the row's position in the list) in this list is false then the image is the default one, otherwise if it is true then the user clicked it and we should put the new image:

private ArrayList<Boolean> imageStatus = new ArrayList<Boolean>();

In your custom adapter constructor initialize this list. For example if you put in your adapter a list of something then you should make your imageStatus as big as that list and filled with false(the default/start status):

//... initialize the imageStatus, objects is the list on which your adapter is based
for (int i = 0; i < objects.size(); i++) {
    imageStatus.add(false);
}

Then in your getView() method:

View v = convertView;

            if (v == null) {
                LayoutInflater vi = (LayoutInflater) getContext()
                        .getSystemService(Context.LAYOUT_INFLATER_SERVICE);
                v = vi.inflate(R.layout.adapters_adapter_with_images, null);
            }

            // find the image
            ImageView favImage = (ImageView) v
                    .findViewById(R.id.toggle_favorite);
            // Set the image bitmap. If the imageStatus flag for this position is TRUE then we
            // show the new image because it was previously clicked by the user
            if (imageStatus.get(position)) {
                int newImage = R.drawable.ic_star_yellow_embossed;
                favImage.setImageBitmap(BitmapFactory.decodeResource(
                        getContext().getResources(), newImage));
            } else {
                // If the imageStatus is FALSE then we explicitly set the image
                // back to the default because we could be dealing with a
                // recycled ImageView that has the new image set(there is no need to set a default drawable in the xml layout)                                       
                int newImage = R.drawable.basket_empty; //the default image
                favImage.setImageBitmap(BitmapFactory.decodeResource(
                        getContext().getResources(), newImage));
            }
            // when clicked... we get the real position of the row and set to TRUE
            // that position in the imageStatus flags list. We also call notifyDataSetChanged
            //on the adapter object to let it know that something has changed and to update!
            favImage.setOnClickListener(new OnClickListener() {

                @Override
                public void onClick(View v) {
                    Integer realPosition = (Integer) v.getTag(); //get the position from the view's tag
                    imageStatus.set(realPosition, true); //this position has been clicked be the user
                    adapter.notifyDataSetChanged(); //notify the adapter
                }

            });
            // set the position to the favImage as a tag, we later retrieve it
            // in the onClick method
            favImage.setTag(new Integer(position));
            return v;

        }

This should work well if you don't plan to dynamically modify the list(remove/add rows), otherwise you'll have to take care of also modifying that list of imageStatus to reflect the changes. You didn't say what was your row data, another approach(and the right one if you plan to do something if the user clicks that image(besides changing it)) is to incorporate the status of the image in the row's data model. Regarding this here are some tutorials:

Android ListView Advanced Interactive or Commonsware-Android Excerpt (Interactive rows)