I would start smaller, by revisiting your adapter. The ListView itself is very simple - in your activity layout, you set your ListView to be match_parent for both width and height.
The adapter is the component which creates each row, which in ListAdapter, is initiated by the getView() method.
@Override
public View getView(int position, View convertView, ViewGroup parent) {
if (convertView != null) {
convertView.setBackgroundResource(R.drawable.list_selector);
}
TextView textView = getGenericView();
textView.setBackgroundResource(R.drawable.list_selector);
textView.setText(contacts.get(position).getName());
return textView;
}
Note what you're doing here is incorrect; you do something to convertView but then you ignore it, and just make a new View. The pattern is more like:
@Override
public View getView(int position, View convertView, ViewGroup parent) {
View rowView = convertView;
if (rowView == null) {
rowView = // create a new View that represents your row
}
// bind the data to rowView, then return it
return rowView;
}
which in your case might be:
@Override
public View getView(int position, View convertView, ViewGroup parent) {
TextView rowView = (TextView) convertView;
if (rowView == null) {
rowView = getGenericView();
rowView.setBackgroundResource(R.drawable.list_selector);
}
rowView.setText(contacts.get(position).getName());
return rowView;
}
See, you only need to create rowView if it's null. Also, the background only needs to be set once (and this can be done in XML if you want).
With creating the row View, I'd recommend starting by inflating a layout that contains a single TextView as the only element.
view_item_contact.xml:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<TextView xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content" />
then your getGenericView() can be renamed to createContactRowView():
private TextView createContactRowView(ViewGroup parent) {
LayoutInflater layoutInflater = LayoutInflater.from(parent.getContext());
return ((TextView) layoutInflater.inflate(R.layout.view_item_contact, parent, false));
}
From there, you can start to style your row in view_item_contact.xml by adding padding, setting a minimum height, centering the text vertically by applying gravity, etc.
view_item_contact.xml:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<TextView xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:minHeight="48dp"
android:gravity="center_vertical"
android:paddingLeft="16dp"
android:paddingRight="16dp"
android:background="@drawable/list_selector" />
In almost all cases, I would avoid creating Views programmatically - always inflate them from XML, so you can separate styles and layout from your logic.
