How to add dividers and spaces between items in RecyclerView?

Question

This is an example of how it could have been done previously in the ListView class, using the divider and dividerHeight parame

Answer 1

The way how I'm handling the Divider view and also Divider Insets is by adding a RecyclerView extension.

1.

Add a new extension file by naming View or RecyclerView:

RecyclerViewExtension.kt

and add the setDivider extension method inside the RecyclerViewExtension.kt file.

/*
* RecyclerViewExtension.kt
* */
import androidx.annotation.DrawableRes
import androidx.core.content.ContextCompat
import androidx.recyclerview.widget.DividerItemDecoration
import androidx.recyclerview.widget.RecyclerView


fun RecyclerView.setDivider(@DrawableRes drawableRes: Int) {
    val divider = DividerItemDecoration(
        this.context,
        DividerItemDecoration.VERTICAL
    )
    val drawable = ContextCompat.getDrawable(
        this.context,
        drawableRes
    )
    drawable?.let {
        divider.setDrawable(it)
        addItemDecoration(divider)
    }
}

2.

Create a Drawable resource file inside of drawable package like recycler_view_divider.xml:

<inset xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:insetLeft="10dp"
    android:insetRight="10dp">

    <shape>
        <size android:height="0.5dp" />
        <solid android:color="@android:color/darker_gray" />
    </shape>

</inset>

where you can specify the left and right margin on android:insetLeft and android:insetRight.

3.

On your Activity or Fragment where the RecyclerView is initialized, you can set the custom drawable by calling:

recyclerView.setDivider(R.drawable.recycler_view_divider)

4.

Cheers

Answer 2

Instead of create a shape xml for change the divider height and color. You can create programmatically like

val divider = DividerItemDecoration(context,
        DividerItemDecoration.VERTICAL)

divider.setDrawable(ShapeDrawable().apply {
    intrinsicHeight = resources.getDimensionPixelOffset(R.dimen.dp_15)
    paint.color = Color.RED // note: currently (support version 28.0.0), we can not use tranparent color here, if we use transparent, we still see a small divider line. So if we want to display transparent space, we can set color = background color or we can create a custom ItemDecoration instead of DividerItemDecoration. 
})

recycler_devices.addItemDecoration(divider)

Answer 3

This is simple, you don't need such complicated code

DividerItemDecoration divider = new 
DividerItemDecoration(mRVMovieReview.getContext(), 
DividerItemDecoration.VERTICAL);
divider.setDrawable(
    ContextCompat.getDrawable(getBaseContext(), R.drawable.line_divider)
);
mRVMovieReview.addItemDecoration(divider);

Add this in your drawable : line_divider.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<shape xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" 
  android:shape="rectangle">
    <size android:height="1dp" />
    <solid android:color="@android:color/black" />
</shape>

Answer 4

OCTOBER 2016 UPDATE

With support library v25.0.0 there finally is a default implementation of basic horizontal and vertical dividers available!

https://developer.android.com/reference/android/support/v7/widget/DividerItemDecoration.html

Answer 5

Since there is no right way to implement this yet properly using Material Design, I just did the following trick to add a divider on the list item directly:

<View
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="1dp"
android:background="@color/dividerColor"/>

Answer 6

Too Late but for GridLayoutManager I use this:

public class GridSpacesItemDecoration : RecyclerView.ItemDecoration
{
    private int space;

    public GridSpacesItemDecoration(int space) {
        this.space = space;
    }

    public override void GetItemOffsets(Android.Graphics.Rect outRect, View view, RecyclerView parent, RecyclerView.State state)
    {
        var position = parent.GetChildLayoutPosition(view);

        /// Only for GridLayoutManager Layouts
        var manager = parent.GetLayoutManager() as GridLayoutManager;

        if (parent.GetChildLayoutPosition(view) < manager.SpanCount)
            outRect.Top = space;

        if (position % 2 != 0) {
            outRect.Right = space;
        }

        outRect.Left = space;
        outRect.Bottom = space;
    }
}

This work for any span count you have.

Ollie.