Android, ListView IllegalStateException: “The content of the adapter has changed but ListView did not receive a notification”

Question

What I want to do: run a background thread which calculates ListView contents and update ListView partially, while results are calculated.

W

Answer 1

Had this happen intermittently, turns out I only had this issue when the list was scrolled after a 'load more' last item was clicked. If the list wasn't scrolled, everything worked fine.

After MUCH debugging, it was a bug on my part, but an inconsistency in the Android code also.

When the validation happens, this code is executed in ListView

        } else if (mItemCount != mAdapter.getCount()) {
            throw new IllegalStateException("The content of the adapter has changed but "
                    + "ListView did not receive a notification. Make sure the content of "

But when onChange happens it fires this code in AdapterView (parent of ListView)

    @Override
    public void onChanged() {
        mDataChanged = true;
        mOldItemCount = mItemCount;
        mItemCount = getAdapter().getCount();

Notice the way the Adapter is NOT guaranteed to be the Same!

In my case, since it was a 'LoadMoreAdapter' I was returning the WrappedAdapter in the getAdapter call (for access to the underlying objects). This resulted in the counts being different due to the extra 'Load More' item and the Exception being thrown.

I only did this because the docs make it seem like it's ok to do

ListView.getAdapter javadoc

Returns the adapter currently in use in this ListView. The returned adapter might not be the same adapter passed to setAdapter(ListAdapter) but might be a WrapperListAdapter.