How to make recycler view always visible even empty

I have a recyclerView. Its width match_parent / height wrap_content. I can not make it both match_parent since it takes only portion of the screen. So I need the area of that recycler been always visible even there are no items in it. Right now I have a background in it. And its visible only when at least 1 item in recycler. If recycler is empty the whole view is gone.

So is there a way to leave recycler with 0 items in it but at the same time the space that it holds be visible on the screen?

CodePudding user response：

Have you tried setting constant height to your RV? It should solve you

  <android.support.v7.widget.RecyclerView
        android:id="@ id/rv"
        android:layout_width="match_parent"
        android:layout_height="50dp"/>

If you need it to be scalable based on the screen size you can use ConstraintLayout to set a percentage of screen for its height:

 <android.support.v7.widget.RecyclerView
        android:id="@ id/rv"
        android:layout_width="match_parent"
        android:layout_height="0dp"
        app:layout_constraintHeight_percent="0.5"
/>

see here for more examples: https://developer.android.com/reference/androidx/constraintlayout/widget/ConstraintLayout#match_constraint-dimensions-added-in-1.1

CodePudding user response：

So the solution here is to set minimumHeight to some value. In this case the width will always be match_parent and you will have some invisible area that you can manipulate as you want