Correct use of setEmtpyView in AdapterView

Karan's answer is spot-on. The AdapterView indeed displays the empty view by merely changing its own visibility vs the empty view's visibility. However, the empty view layout does not necessarily need to be in the same XML file as that of the AdapterView. I found it useful to separate the two because I use a single layout XML file (containing a GridView) for multiple activities, but I wanted to specify different emptyView layouts for each of them.

The key is to add the empty view to the activity with addContentView. Remember to do this after you have called setContentView specifying your main AdapterView.

My code (in AbstractBaseActivity.onCreate) :

View mainView = inflater.inflate(R.layout.imagegrid, null);
GridView gridView = (GridView)mainView.findViewById(R.id.gridView);
View emptyView = inflater.inflate(getIdOfEmptyView(), null, false);
gridView.setEmptyView(emptyView);
// Any additional processing on mainView
setContentView(mainView);
addContentView(emptyView, new LayoutParams(LayoutParams.FILL_PARENT, LayoutParams.FILL_PARENT));

In each child activity I override getIdOfEmptyView as follows:

@Override
protected int getIdOfEmptyView()
{
    return R.layout.emptyView_Favorites;
}

You can define external XML layout files, inflate and set it as an empty view. Only thing to remember is to set the parent of the inflated view.

View emptyView = inflater.inflate(R.layout.id_of_your_layoout_file, parent, false);
gridView.setEmptyView(emptyView);

or

listView.setEmptyView(emptyView);

You need to add this same view in the layout in which you have added the AdapterView.

AdapterView only changes its visibility based on the contents in the adapter.

EDITED :
Following layout and code works fine :

<LinearLayout
    xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:orientation="vertical"
    android:layout_width="fill_parent"
    android:layout_height="fill_parent">
    <ListView
        android:layout_width="fill_parent"
        android:layout_height="300dip"
        android:id="@+id/list_view" />
    <TextView
        android:id="@+id/empty_list_view"
        android:layout_width="wrap_content"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:text="List view is empty"
        android:visibility="gone" />
</LinearLayout>

Code :

ListView listView = (ListView) findViewById( R.id.list_view );
listView.setEmptyView( findViewById( R.id.empty_list_view ) );
listView.setAdapter( new ArrayAdapter( this, R.layout.selected_spinner_view, new ArrayList() ) );