Android BaseAdapter Context

Question

Fragments

 @Override
 public View onCreateView(LayoutInflater inflater, ViewGroup container, Bundle savedInstanceState) {
   //inflater provided
   View view;
   ...
   return view;
 }

BaseAdapter:

 @Override
   public View getView(int position, View convertView, ViewGroup parent) {
     //have to make a constructor to get an inflater
     ....
     return view;
   }

Why does BaseAdapter's getView() method parameters doesnt provide an LayoutInflater unlike Fragment's onCreateView()? Wherein in this method we are expected to inflate views?

Inflating views requires that we have a reference to an LayoutInflater.

Answer 1

One of the reason could be, most of the times Views will be reused. When the view is reused i.e. the second parameter View is not null, you will not be using the Inflater. Hence that could be the reason why the API has been designed in that way.

In case of Fragments, you will have to create a layout either by using APIs or inflating a resource. Since the best practice is to separate out the UI design from Activity's behavior, most of the time Inflater is used. These are the statements provided in the official documentation.

To return a layout from onCreateView(), you can inflate it from a layout resource defined in XML. To help you do so, onCreateView() provides a LayoutInflater object.