Equivalent of ListView.setEmptyView in RecyclerView

Question

In RecyclerView, I want to set an empty view to be shown when the adapter is empty. Is there an equivalent of ListView.setEmptyView()?

Answer 1

Try RVEmptyObserver:

It's an implementation of an AdapterDataObserver that allows you to simply set a View as the default empty layout for your RecylerView. This way, instead of using a custom RecyclerView and making your life harder, you can easily use it with your existing code:

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Example Usage:

RVEmptyObserver observer = new RVEmptyObserver(recyclerView, emptyView)
rvAdapter.registerAdapterDataObserver(observer);

You can see the code and example usage in an actual app here.

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Class:

public class RVEmptyObserver extends RecyclerView.AdapterDataObserver {
    private View emptyView;
    private RecyclerView recyclerView;

    public RVEmptyObserver(RecyclerView rv, View ev) {
        this.recyclerView = rv;
        this.emptyView    = ev;
        checkIfEmpty();
    }

    private void checkIfEmpty() {
        if (emptyView != null && recyclerView.getAdapter() != null) {
            boolean emptyViewVisible = recyclerView.getAdapter().getItemCount() == 0;
            emptyView.setVisibility(emptyViewVisible ? View.VISIBLE : View.GONE);
            recyclerView.setVisibility(emptyViewVisible ? View.GONE : View.VISIBLE);
        }
    }

    public void onChanged() { checkIfEmpty(); }
    public void onItemRangeInserted(int positionStart, int itemCount) { checkIfEmpty(); }
    public void onItemRangeRemoved(int positionStart, int itemCount) { checkIfEmpty(); }
}