Add Drag and Drop on RecyclerView with DiffUtil

I have a list that gets updated from a Room Database. I receive the updated data from Room as a new list and I then pass it to ListAdapter's submitList to get animations for the changes.

list.observe(viewLifecycleOwner, { updatedList ->
    listAdapter.submitList(updatedList)
})

Now, I want to add a drag and drop functionality for the same RecyclerView. I tried to implement it using ItemTouchHelper. However, the notifyItemMoved() is not working as ListAdapter updates its content through the submitList().

override fun onMove(
    recyclerView: RecyclerView,
    viewHolder: RecyclerView.ViewHolder,
    target: RecyclerView.ViewHolder
): Boolean {

    val from = viewHolder.bindingAdapterPosition
    val to = target.bindingAdapterPosition

    val list = itemListAdapter.currentList.toMutableList()
    Collections.swap(list, from, to)

    // does not work for ListAdapter
    // itemListAdapter.notifyItemMoved(from, to)

    itemListAdapter.submitList(list)

    return false
}

The drag and drop now works fine but only when dragged slowly, when the dragging gets fast enough, I get different and inconsistent results.

What could be the reason for this? What is the best way that I can achieve a drag and drop functionality for my RecyclerView which uses ListAdapter?

I ended up implementing a new adapter and use it instead of ListAdapter, as mentioned on Martin Marconcini's answer. I added two separate functions. One for receiving updates from Room database (replacement for submitList from ListAdapter) and another for every position change from drag

MyListAdapter.kt

class MyListAdapter(list: ArrayList<Item>) : RecyclerView.Adapter<RecyclerView.ViewHolder>() {

    // save instance instead of creating a new one every submit 
    // list to save some allocation time. Thanks to Martin Marconcini
    private val diffCallback = DiffCallback(list, ArrayList())

    fun submitList(updatedList: List<Item>) {
        diffCallback.newList = updatedList
        val diffResult = DiffUtil.calculateDiff(diffCallback)

        list.clear()
        list.addAll(updatedList)
        diffResult.dispatchUpdatesTo(this)
    }

    fun itemMoved(from: Int, to: Int) {
        Collections.swap(list, from, to)
        notifyItemMoved(from, to)
    }

}

DiffCallback.kt

class DiffCallback(
    val oldList: List<Item>,
    var newList: List<Item>
) : DiffUtil.Callback() {

    override fun getOldListSize(): Int {
        return oldList.size
    }

    override fun getNewListSize(): Int {
        return newList.size
    }

    override fun areItemsTheSame(oldItemPosition: Int, newItemPosition: Int): Boolean {
        val oldItem = oldList[oldItemPosition]
        val newItem = newList[newItemPosition]
        return oldItem.id == newItem.id
    }

    override fun areContentsTheSame(oldItemPosition: Int, newItemPosition: Int): Boolean {
        val oldItem = oldList[oldItemPosition]
        val newItem = newList[newItemPosition]
        return compareContents(oldItem, newItem)
    }
}

Call itemMoved every position change:

override fun onMove(
    recyclerView: RecyclerView,
    viewHolder: RecyclerView.ViewHolder,
    target: RecyclerView.ViewHolder
): Boolean {
    val from = viewHolder.bindingAdapterPosition
    val to = target.bindingAdapterPosition
    itemListAdapter.itemMoved(from, to)

    // Update database as well if needed

    return true
}

When receiving updates from Room database:

You may also want to check if currently dragging using onSelectedChanged if you are also updating your database every position change to prevent unnecessary calls to submitList

list.observe(viewLifecycleOwner, { updatedList ->
    listAdapter.submitList(updatedList)
})