How to Animate Addition or Removal of Android List

Question

In iOS, there is a very easy and powerful facility to animate the addition and removal of UITableView rows, here's a clip from a youtube video showing the default animation. Note how the surrounding rows collapse onto the deleted row. This animation helps users keep track of what changed in a list and where in the list they were looking at when the data changed.

Since I've been developing on Android I've found no equivalent facility to animate individual rows in a TableView. Calling notifyDataSetChanged() on my Adapter causes the ListView to immediately update its content with new information. I'd like to show a simple animation of a new row pushing in or sliding out when the data changes, but I can't find any documented way to do this. It looks like LayoutAnimationController might hold a key to getting this to work, but when I set a LayoutAnimationController on my ListView (similar to ApiDemo's LayoutAnimation2) and remove elements from my adapter after the list has displayed, the elements disappear immediately instead of getting animated out.

I've also tried things like the following to animate an individual item when it is removed:

@Override
protected void onListItemClick(ListView l, View v, final int position, long id) {
    Animation animation = new ScaleAnimation(1, 1, 1, 0);
    animation.setDuration(100);
    getListView().getChildAt(position).startAnimation(animation);
    l.postDelayed(new Runnable() {
        public void run() {
            mStringList.remove(position);
            mAdapter.notifyDataSetChanged();
        }
    }, 100);
}

However, the rows surrounding the animated row don't move position until they jump to their new positions when notifyDataSetChanged() is called. It appears ListView doesn't update its layout once its elements have been placed.

While writing my own implementation/fork of ListView has crossed my mind, this seems like something that shouldn't be so difficult.

Thanks!

Answer 1

I haven't tried it but it looks like animateLayoutChanges should do what you're looking for. I see it in the ImageSwitcher class, I assume it's in the ViewSwitcher class as well?

Answer 2

Animation anim = AnimationUtils.loadAnimation(
                     GoTransitApp.this, android.R.anim.slide_out_right
                 );
anim.setDuration(500);
listView.getChildAt(index).startAnimation(anim );

new Handler().postDelayed(new Runnable() {

    public void run() {

        FavouritesManager.getInstance().remove(
            FavouritesManager.getInstance().getTripManagerAtIndex(index)
        );
        populateList();
        adapter.notifyDataSetChanged();

    }

}, anim.getDuration());

for top-to-down animation use :

<set xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
        <translate android:fromYDelta="20%p" android:toYDelta="-20"
            android:duration="@android:integer/config_mediumAnimTime"/>
        <alpha android:fromAlpha="0.0" android:toAlpha="1.0"
            android:duration="@android:integer/config_mediumAnimTime" />
</set>

Answer 3

After inserting new row to ListView, I just scroll the ListView to new position.

ListView.smoothScrollToPosition(position);

Answer 4

Here's the source code to let you delete rows and reorder them.

A demo APK file is also available. Deleting rows is done more along the lines of Google's Gmail app that reveals a bottom view after swiping a top view. The bottom view can have an Undo button or whatever you want.

Answer 5

As i had explained my approach in my site i shared the link.Anyways the idea is create bitmaps by getdrawingcache .have two bitmap and animate the lower bitmap to create the moving effect

Please see the following code:

listView.setOnItemClickListener(new AdapterView.OnItemClickListener()
    {
        public void onItemClick(AdapterView<?> parent, View rowView, int positon, long id)
        {
            listView.setDrawingCacheEnabled(true);
            //listView.buildDrawingCache(true);
            bitmap = listView.getDrawingCache();
            myBitmap1 = Bitmap.createBitmap(bitmap, 0, 0, bitmap.getWidth(), rowView.getBottom());
            myBitmap2 = Bitmap.createBitmap(bitmap, 0, rowView.getBottom(), bitmap.getWidth(), bitmap.getHeight() - myBitmap1.getHeight());
            listView.setDrawingCacheEnabled(false);
            imgView1.setBackgroundDrawable(new BitmapDrawable(getResources(), myBitmap1));
            imgView2.setBackgroundDrawable(new BitmapDrawable(getResources(), myBitmap2));
            imgView1.setVisibility(View.VISIBLE);
            imgView2.setVisibility(View.VISIBLE);
            RelativeLayout.LayoutParams lp = new RelativeLayout.LayoutParams(RelativeLayout.LayoutParams.WRAP_CONTENT, RelativeLayout.LayoutParams.WRAP_CONTENT);
            lp.setMargins(0, rowView.getBottom(), 0, 0);
            imgView2.setLayoutParams(lp);
            TranslateAnimation transanim = new TranslateAnimation(0, 0, 0, -rowView.getHeight());
            transanim.setDuration(400);
            transanim.setAnimationListener(new Animation.AnimationListener()
            {
                public void onAnimationStart(Animation animation)
                {
                }

                public void onAnimationRepeat(Animation animation)
                {
                }

                public void onAnimationEnd(Animation animation)
                {
                    imgView1.setVisibility(View.GONE);
                    imgView2.setVisibility(View.GONE);
                }
            });
            array.remove(positon);
            adapter.notifyDataSetChanged();
            imgView2.startAnimation(transanim);
        }
    });

For understanding with images see this

Thanks.

Answer 6

Just sharing another approach:

First set the list view's android:animateLayoutChanges to true:

<ListView
        android:id="@+id/items_list"
        android:layout_width="match_parent"
        android:layout_height="match_parent"
        android:animateLayoutChanges="true"/>

Then I use a handler to add items and update the listview with delay:

Handler mHandler = new Handler();
    //delay in milliseconds
    private int mInitialDelay = 1000;
    private final int DELAY_OFFSET = 1000;


public void addItem(final Integer item) {
    mHandler.postDelayed(new Runnable() {
        @Override
        public void run() {
            new Thread(new Runnable() {
                @Override
                public void run() {
                    mDataSet.add(item);
                    runOnUiThread(new Runnable() {
                        @Override
                        public void run() {
                            mAdapter.notifyDataSetChanged();
                        }
                    });
                }
            }).start();

        }
    }, mInitialDelay);
    mInitialDelay += DELAY_OFFSET;
}