Giving more spacing between 3 and 4 row item in Recycler GridLayoutManager

Question

I am using RecyclerView with GridLayoutManager as a layout for the bus ticket booking. Everything works fine but except the place where I stuck with the logics that I have to use to leave more spacing between 3 and 4 column item in all the rows. Basically my layout should be like as the screenshot attached below.

My Requirement:

Current Output:

I am also posting my complete RecyclerView GridLayoutManager for your reference as follows

MultiSelectRecyclerViewAdapter.java

public class MultiSelectRecyclerViewAdapter extends SelectableAdapter<MultiSelectRecyclerViewAdapter.ViewHolder> {

    private ArrayList<String> mArrayList;
    private Context mContext;
    private ViewHolder.ClickListener clickListener;



    public MultiSelectRecyclerViewAdapter (Context context, ArrayList<String> arrayList,ViewHolder.ClickListener clickListener) {
        this.mArrayList = arrayList;
        this.mContext = context;
        this.clickListener = clickListener;

    }

    // Create new views
    @Override
    public MultiSelectRecyclerViewAdapter.ViewHolder onCreateViewHolder(ViewGroup parent,
                                                             int viewType) {

        View itemLayoutView = LayoutInflater.from(parent.getContext()).inflate(
                R.layout.row_multiselect, null);

        ViewHolder viewHolder = new ViewHolder(itemLayoutView,clickListener);

        return viewHolder;
    }

    @Override
    public void onBindViewHolder(ViewHolder viewHolder, int position) {

        viewHolder.tvName.setText(mArrayList.get (position));

        viewHolder.selectedOverlay.setVisibility(isSelected(position) ? View.VISIBLE : View.INVISIBLE);

    }

    @Override
    public int getItemCount() {
        return mArrayList.size();
    }

    public static class ViewHolder extends RecyclerView.ViewHolder  implements View.OnClickListener,View.OnLongClickListener  {

        public TextView tvName;
        private ClickListener listener;
        private final View selectedOverlay;


        public ViewHolder(View itemLayoutView,ClickListener listener) {
            super(itemLayoutView);

            this.listener = listener;

            tvName = (TextView) itemLayoutView.findViewById(R.id.tvName);
            selectedOverlay = (View) itemView.findViewById(R.id.selected_overlay);

            itemLayoutView.setOnClickListener(this);

            itemLayoutView.setOnLongClickListener (this);
        }

        @Override
        public void onClick(View v) {
            if (listener != null) {
                listener.onItemClicked(getAdapterPosition ());
            }
        }
        @Override
        public boolean onLongClick (View view) {
            if (listener != null) {
                return listener.onItemLongClicked(getAdapterPosition ());
            }
            return false;
        }

        public interface ClickListener {
            public void onItemClicked(int position);

            public boolean onItemLongClicked(int position);
        }
        }
    }

MultiSelectRecyclerViewActivity.java

public class MultiSelectRecyclerViewActivity extends AppCompatActivity implements MultiSelectRecyclerViewAdapter.ViewHolder.ClickListener {

    private Toolbar toolbar;

    private RecyclerView mRecyclerView;
    private MultiSelectRecyclerViewAdapter mAdapter;
    private RecyclerView.LayoutManager mLayoutManager;

    private ArrayList<String> mArrayList  = new ArrayList<String>();

    @Override
    protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate (savedInstanceState);
        setContentView(R.layout.activity_multiselect);
        toolbar = (Toolbar) findViewById(R.id.toolbar);


        for (int i = 1; i <= 48; i++) {

            mArrayList.add ( ""+ i);
        }

        if (toolbar != null) {
            setSupportActionBar(toolbar);
            getSupportActionBar().setTitle("MultiSelectRecylcerView");

        }

        mRecyclerView = (RecyclerView) findViewById(R.id.my_recycler_view);
        mRecyclerView.setHasFixedSize(true);
        mRecyclerView.setLayoutManager(new GridLayoutManager (this,4));
        mAdapter = new MultiSelectRecyclerViewAdapter (MultiSelectRecyclerViewActivity.this,mArrayList,this);
        mRecyclerView.setAdapter (mAdapter);


    }

    @Override
    public void onItemClicked (int position) {

        toggleSelection(position);
    }

    @Override
    public boolean onItemLongClicked (int position) {
        toggleSelection(position);

        return true;
    }

    private void toggleSelection(int position) {
        mAdapter.toggleSelection (position);

    }
}

What I have tried in coding:

I have followed this gist to assign the spacing for my grid items using ItemDecoration as below. But unfortunately I could able to assign spacing only equally between all the items.

mRecyclerView.setLayoutManager(new GridLayoutManager(context, NUM_COLUMNS);
ItemOffsetDecoration itemDecoration = new ItemOffsetDecoration(context, R.dimen.item_offset);
mRecyclerView.addItemDecoration(itemDecoration);

Kindly please help me with any kind of tips and solutions to solve my case. I am completely stuck up how to proceed with this requirement and logic using RecyclerView which I considered should be the optimized approach. Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Using item decoration here could create some problems. If you are planning to handle click on the item, clicking on blank space would be interpreted as a click on items located in inner columns.

You can configure GridLayoutManager for handling one more column and handle space as a specific view type. Here I put code implementing this approach.

Hope this could help.