Android ListView Refresh Single Row

As Romain Guy explained a while back during the Google I/O session, the most efficient way to only update one view in a list view is something like the following (this one update the whole view data):

ListView list = getListView();
int start = list.getFirstVisiblePosition();
for(int i=start, j=list.getLastVisiblePosition();i<=j;i++)
    if(target==list.getItemAtPosition(i)){
        View view = list.getChildAt(i-start);
        list.getAdapter().getView(i, view, list);
        break;
    }

Assuming target is one item of the adapter.

This code retrieve the ListView, then browse the currently shown views, compare the target item you are looking for with each displayed view items, and if your target is among those, get the enclosing view and execute the adapter getView on that view to refresh the display.

As a side note invalidate doesn't work like some people expect and will not refresh the view like getView does, notifyDataSetChanged will rebuild the whole list and end up calling getview for every displayed items and invalidateViews will also affect a bunch.

One last thing, one can also get extra performance if he only needs to change a child of a row view and not the whole row like getView does. In that case, the following code can replace list.getAdapter().getView(i, view, list); (example to change a TextView text):

((TextView)view.findViewById(R.id.myid)).setText("some new text");

In code we trust.

One option is to manipulate the ListView directly. First check if the index of the updated row is between getFirstVisiblePosition() and getLastVisiblePosition(), these two give you the first and last positions in the adapter that are visible on the screen. Then you can get the row View with getChildAt(int index) and change it.

This simpler method works well for me, and you only need to know the position index to get ahold of the view:

// mListView is an instance variable

private void updateItemAtPosition(int position) {
    int visiblePosition = mListView.getFirstVisiblePosition();
    View view = mListView.getChildAt(position - visiblePosition);
    mListView.getAdapter().getView(position, view, mListView);
}