Limit height of ListView on Android

Question

I want to show a button under a ListView. Problem is, if the ListView gets extended (items added...), the button is pushed out of the screen.

I tried a LinearLayout with weights (as suggested in Android: why is there no maxHeight for a View?), but either I got the weights wrong or it simply didn't work.

Also, I found somewhere the hint to use a RelativeLayout. The ListView would then be set above the button with the android:layout_above param.

Problem with this is that I don't know how to position the button afterwards. In the example I found, the View below the ListView was adjusted using android:layout_alignParentBottom, but I don't want my button to cling to the bottom of the screen.

Any ideas apart from using setHeight-method and some calculating of the required space?

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Edit: I got a lot of useful answers.

• bigstone's & user639183's solution almost worked perfectly. However, I had to add an extra padding/margin to the bottom of the button, as it still would be pushed half way out of the screen (but then stopped)

• Adinia's answer with the relative layout only is fine if you want the button fixed to the bottom of the screen. It's not what I intended but still might be useful for others.

• AngeloS's solution was the one I chose at the end as it just created the effects I wanted. However, I made two minor changes to the LinearLayout around the button:

  • First, as I didn't want to have any absolute values in my layout, I changed android:layout_height="45px" to wrap_content, which works just fine as well.

  • Second, as I wanted the button to be centered horizontally, which is only supported by vertical LinearLayout, I changed android:orientation="horizontal" to "vertical".

  AngeloS also stated in his initial post that he was not sure if the android:layout_weight="0.1" param in the LinearLayout around the ListView had any effect; I just tried and it actually does! Without, the button gets pushed out of the screen again.

Answer 1

I solved this problem in code, setting height of listview only if it has more than 5 items in it:

if(adapter.getCount() > 5){
        View item = adapter.getView(0, null, listView);
        item.measure(0, 0);         
        ViewGroup.LayoutParams params = new ViewGroup.LayoutParams(LayoutParams.MATCH_PARENT, (int) (5.5 * item.getMeasuredHeight()));
        listView.setLayoutParams(params);
}

Notice that I set the max height to 5.5 times the height of a single item, so the user will know for sure there is some scrolling to do! :)