Getting all of the items from an ArrayAdapter

The solution that I've gone with in the meantime is just to not use ArrayAdapter. In cases where you're fighting against this API, it seems like it's better just to use the less fully-featured (and complex) BaseAdapter. You can read more about the decision to go with BaseAdapter instead of ArrayAdapter in this article: Android Adapter Good Practices.

I'm a little late to the game, but I've run up against a similar issue.

One way to deal with #1 would be to maintain the reference to the list within a subclass of ArrayAdapter, so that your reuse is controlled by the adapter object.

Something like:

public class DomainAdapter extends ArrayAdapter<DomainObject> {

    private final List<DomainObject> items;

    public DomainAdapter(Context context, List<DomainObject> items) {
        super(context, R.layout.mine, items);
        this.items = items;
    }

    public List<DomainObject> getItems() {
        return items;
    }
}