How to show header of ListView when its empty

Question

I am developing the following screen

The fourboxes next to each other are buttons. On clicking of the buttons I am changing the adapter of the listview.

Since the content above the listview took up lot of space I made the whole thing as an header and added it via code.

   myPollsList = (ListView) findViewById(R.id.listArea);
myPollsList.addHeaderView(getLayoutInflater().inflate(R.layout.profile_listview_header, null));

Now I want to show some view when the list is empty. But if I do that then the header also goes away.

I am using this in a Activity and not a ListActivity. Any suggestions or workarounds for showing the header even when the list is empty ?

EDIT: Refer to my earlier question here ListView not getting space to show content on smaller screens . This is where someone suggested me to solve the problem by putting it as a header

Symposiarch

Answer 1

So this is how I solved it. I had a custom adapter which was connected to the listview. When it found that it had zero items to display. It would add a fake empty view as an item to the list.

Symposiarch

Aghhh... All this hacks we have to do to make something that should be basic functionality work! It drives me crazy! – Buckram

Answer 2

I found a simple solution for this problem. If there's no elements for list and you are not adding the adapter, just add this:

mListView.setAdapter(null);

and the header will appear. It's easier than adding empty / fake item to the list.

Tramline

thanks its work for me after adding these lines after addHeaderView() method – Hint

Answer 3

maybe you will like this Android addHeaderView disappears when no items in ListView

override/subclass your adapter to return false from isEmpty()

Performing

Answer 4

Don't use top layouts of button as header for list view.

So to adjust UI without using list header use weights.

Give parent Linear layout weight sum as 4 and 1, 1 to top Layouts and 2 for list view.

Chanellechaney

Will that reduce the height of the top layouts ? – Symposiarch

That is not what I want. I want the height to be the same across all devices. That is why I chose the header route so that the height of the header remains fixed. And the rest of list view can be scrolled down – Symposiarch

as a proportion your all 3 views will be same size like 1:1:2 and also it will work great on any device just try it. cheers – Chanellechaney

Nope. This is not the effect I wanted. Thanks for the help :) – Symposiarch