Creating ViewHolders for ListViews with different item layouts

I have a ListView with different layouts for different items. Some items are separators. Some items are different because they hold different kinds of data, etc.

I want to implement ViewHolders to speed up the getView process, but I'm not quite sure how to go about it. Different layouts have different pieces of data (which makes naming difficult) and different numbers of Views I want to use.

How should I go about doing this?

The best idea I can come up with is to create a generic ViewHolder with X items where X is the number of Views in an item layout with the highest number of them. For the other views with a small number of Views, I'll just use a subsection of those variables in the ViewHolder. So say I have 2 layouts I use for 2 different items. One has 3 TextViews and the other has 1. I would create a ViewHolder with 3 TextView variables and only use 1 of them for my other item. My problem is that this can get really ugly looking and feels really hacky; especially when an item layout may have many Views of many different types.

Here is a very basic getView:

@Override
public View getView(int position, View convertView, ViewGroup parent) {

    MyHolder holder;

    View v = convertView;
    if (v == null) {
        LayoutInflater vi = (LayoutInflater)getContext().getSystemService(Context.LAYOUT_INFLATER_SERVICE);
        v = vi.inflate(R.layout.layout_mylistlist_item, parent, false);

        holder = new MyHolder();
        holder.text = (TextView) v.findViewById(R.id.mylist_itemname);
        v.setTag(holder);
    }
    else {
        holder = (MyHolder)v.getTag();
    }

    MyListItem myItem = m_items.get(position);

    // set up the list item
    if (myItem != null) {
        // set item text
        if (holder.text != null) {
            holder.text.setText(myItem.getItemName());
        }
    }

    // return the created view
    return v;
}

Suppose I had different types of row layouts, I could have a ViewHolder for each type of row. But what type would I declare "holder" to be at the top? Or would I declare a holder for each type and then use the one for the type of row I'm on.

ListView has a built in type management system. In your adapter, you have several types of items, each with their own view and layout. By overriding getItemViewType to return the data type of a given position, ListView is garunteed to pass in the correct convertview for that type of data. Then, in your getView method simply check the datatype and use a switch statement to handle each type differently.

Each Layout type should have its own viewholder for naming clarity and ease of maintainence. Name the ViewHolders something related to each data type to keep everything straight.

Trying to overlap everything into one ViewHolder is just not worth the effort.

Edit Example

@Override 
public View getView(int position, View convertView, ViewGroup parent) { 
    int viewType = this.getItemViewType(position);

    switch(viewType)
    {
       case TYPE1:

        Type1Holder holder1; 

         View v = convertView; 
         if (v == null) { 
             LayoutInflater vi = (LayoutInflater)getContext().getSystemService     (Context.LAYOUT_INFLATER_SERVICE); 
             v = vi.inflate(R.layout.layout_mylistlist_item_type_1, parent, false); 

             holder1 = new Type1Holder (); 
             holder1.text = (TextView) v.findViewById(R.id.mylist_itemname); 
             v.setTag(holder1); 
         } 
         else { 
             holder1 = (Type1Holder)v.getTag(); 
         } 

         MyListItem myItem = m_items.get(position); 

         // set up the list item 
         if (myItem != null) { 
             // set item text 
             if (holder1.text != null) { 
                 holder1.text.setText(myItem.getItemName()); 
             } 
         } 

         // return the created view 
         return v; 


     case TYPE2:
            Type2Holder holder2; 

         View v = convertView; 
         if (v == null) { 
             LayoutInflater vi = (LayoutInflater)getContext().getSystemService(Context.LAYOUT_INFLATER_SERVICE); 
             v = vi.inflate(R.layout.layout_mylistlist_item_type_2, parent, false); 

             holder2 = new Type2Holder (); 
             holder2.text = (TextView) v.findViewById(R.id.mylist_itemname); 
             holder2.icon = (ImageView) v.findViewById(R.id.mylist_itemicon); 
             v.setTag(holder1); 
         } 
         else { 
             holder2 = (Type2Holder)v.getTag(); 
         } 

         MyListItem myItem = m_items.get(position); 

         // set up the list item 
         if (myItem != null) { 
             // set item text 
             if (holder2.text != null) { 
                 holder2.text.setText(myItem.getItemName()); 
             } 

             if(holder2.icon != null)
                 holder2.icon.setDrawable(R.drawable.icon1);
         } 


         // return the created view 
         return v; 


       default:
           //Throw exception, unknown data type
    }
}