Android Endless List

One solution is to implement an OnScrollListener and make changes (like adding items, etc.) to the ListAdapter at a convenient state in its onScroll method.

The following ListActivity shows a list of integers, starting with 40, adding items when the user scrolls to the end of the list.

public class Test extends ListActivity implements OnScrollListener {

    Aleph0 adapter = new Aleph0();

    protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        setListAdapter(adapter); 
        getListView().setOnScrollListener(this);
    }

    public void onScroll(AbsListView view,
        int firstVisible, int visibleCount, int totalCount) {

        boolean loadMore = /* maybe add a padding */
            firstVisible + visibleCount >= totalCount;

        if(loadMore) {
            adapter.count += visibleCount; // or any other amount
            adapter.notifyDataSetChanged();
        }
    }

    public void onScrollStateChanged(AbsListView v, int s) { }    

    class Aleph0 extends BaseAdapter {
        int count = 40; /* starting amount */

        public int getCount() { return count; }
        public Object getItem(int pos) { return pos; }
        public long getItemId(int pos) { return pos; }

        public View getView(int pos, View v, ViewGroup p) {
                TextView view = new TextView(Test.this);
                view.setText("entry " + pos);
                return view;
        }
    }
}

You should obviously use separate threads for long running actions (like loading web-data) and might want to indicate progress in the last list item (like the market or gmail apps do).

I know its an old question and the Android world has mostly moved on to RecyclerViews, but for anyone interested, you may find this library very interesting.

It uses the BaseAdapter used with the ListView to detect when the list has been scrolled to the last item or when it is being scrolled away from the last item.

It comes with an example project(barely 100 lines of Activity code) that can be used to quickly understand how it works.

Simple usage:

class Boy{

private String name;
private double height;
private int age;
//Other code

}

An adapter to hold Boy objects would look like:

public class BoysAdapter extends EndlessAdapter<Boy>{




        ViewHolder holder = null;


        if (convertView == null) {
            LayoutInflater inflater = LayoutInflater.from(parent
                    .getContext());

            holder = new ViewHolder();

            convertView = inflater.inflate(
                    R.layout.list_cell, parent, false);


            holder.nameView = convertView.findViewById(R.id.cell);

            // minimize the default image.
            convertView.setTag(holder);
        } else {
            holder = (ViewHolder) convertView.getTag();
        }

        Boy boy = getItem(position);

        try {
            holder.nameView.setText(boy.getName());

            ///Other data rendering codes.

        } catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }

        return super.getView(position,convertView,parent);

}

Notice how the BoysAdapter's getView method returns a call to the EndlessAdapter superclass's getView method. This is 100% essential.

Now to create the adapter, do:

   adapter = new ModelAdapter() {
            @Override
            public void onScrollToBottom(int bottomIndex, boolean moreItemsCouldBeAvailable) {

                if (moreItemsCouldBeAvailable) { 
                    makeYourServerCallForMoreItems();
                } else {
                    if (loadMore.getVisibility() != View.VISIBLE) {
                        loadMore.setVisibility(View.VISIBLE);
                    }
                }
            }

            @Override
            public void onScrollAwayFromBottom(int currentIndex) { 
                loadMore.setVisibility(View.GONE);
            }

            @Override
            public void onFinishedLoading(boolean moreItemsReceived) { 
                if (!moreItemsReceived) {
                    loadMore.setVisibility(View.VISIBLE);
                }
            }
        };

The loadMore item is a button or other ui element that may be clicked to fetch more data from the url. When placed as described in the code, the adapter knows exactly when to show that button and when to disable it. Just create the button in your xml and place it as shown in the adapter code above.

Enjoy.