Can we make use of the built in setOnClickListener on RecyclerView row item instead of custom item click listener?

Question

I have seen many examples for providing click functionality (for selecting row item in recycler view) to a row item, but all of them are using custom click listener class to achieve this. Is there any method to achieve this click functionality?

Answer 1

Detecting click on a RecyclerView item is very easy. All you need to do is define an interface (if you're not using Kotlin, in which case you just pass in a lambda):

public class MyAdapter extends RecyclerView.Adapter<MyViewHolder> {
    private final Clicks clicks;

    public MyAdapter(Clicks clicks) {
        this.clicks = clicks;
    }

    private List<MyObject> items = Collections.emptyList();

    public void updateData(List<MyObject> items) {
        this.items = items;
        notifyDataSetChanged(); // TODO: use ListAdapter for diffing instead if you need animations
    }

    public interface Clicks {
        void onItemSelected(MyObject myObject, int position);
    }

    public class MyViewHolder extends RecyclerView.ViewHolder {
        private MyObject myObject;    

        public MyViewHolder(View view) {
            super(view);
            // bind views
            view.setOnClickListener((v) -> {
                int adapterPosition = getAdapterPosition();
                if(adapterPosition >= 0) {
                    clicks.onItemSelected(myObject, adapterPosition);
                }
            });
        }

        public void bind(MyObject myObject) {
            this.myObject = myObject;
            // bind data to views
        }
    }
}

Same code in Kotlin:

class MyAdapter(val itemClicks: (MyObject, Int) -> Unit): RecyclerView.Adapter<MyViewHolder>() {
    private var items: List<MyObject> = Collections.emptyList()

    fun updateData(items: List<MyObject>) {
        this.items = items
        notifyDataSetChanged() // TODO: use ListAdapter for diffing instead if you need animations
    }

    inner class MyViewHolder(val myView: View): RecyclerView.ViewHolder(myView) {
        private lateinit var myObject: MyObject

        init {
            // binds views
            myView.onClick {
                val adapterPosition = getAdapterPosition()
                if(adapterPosition >= 0) {
                    itemClicks.invoke(myObject, adapterPosition)
                }
            }
        }

        fun bind(myObject: MyObject) {
            this.myObject = myObject
            // bind data to views
        }
    }
}