RecyclerView GridLayoutManager: how to auto-detect span count?

Personaly I don't like to subclass RecyclerView for this, because for me it seems that there is GridLayoutManager's responsibility to detect span count. So after some android source code digging for RecyclerView and GridLayoutManager I wrote my own class extended GridLayoutManager that do the job:

public class GridAutofitLayoutManager extends GridLayoutManager
{
    private int columnWidth;
    private boolean isColumnWidthChanged = true;
    private int lastWidth;
    private int lastHeight;

    public GridAutofitLayoutManager(@NonNull final Context context, final int columnWidth) {
        /* Initially set spanCount to 1, will be changed automatically later. */
        super(context, 1);
        setColumnWidth(checkedColumnWidth(context, columnWidth));
    }

    public GridAutofitLayoutManager(
        @NonNull final Context context,
        final int columnWidth,
        final int orientation,
        final boolean reverseLayout) {

        /* Initially set spanCount to 1, will be changed automatically later. */
        super(context, 1, orientation, reverseLayout);
        setColumnWidth(checkedColumnWidth(context, columnWidth));
    }

    private int checkedColumnWidth(@NonNull final Context context, final int columnWidth) {
        if (columnWidth <= 0) {
            /* Set default columnWidth value (48dp here). It is better to move this constant
            to static constant on top, but we need context to convert it to dp, so can't really
            do so. */
            columnWidth = (int) TypedValue.applyDimension(TypedValue.COMPLEX_UNIT_DIP, 48,
                    context.getResources().getDisplayMetrics());
        }
        return columnWidth;
    }

    public void setColumnWidth(final int newColumnWidth) {
        if (newColumnWidth > 0 && newColumnWidth != columnWidth) {
            columnWidth = newColumnWidth;
            isColumnWidthChanged = true;
        }
    }

    @Override
    public void onLayoutChildren(@NonNull final RecyclerView.Recycler recycler, @NonNull final RecyclerView.State state) {
        final int width = getWidth();
        final int height = getHeight();
        if (columnWidth > 0 && width > 0 && height > 0 && (isColumnWidthChanged || lastWidth != width || lastHeight != height)) {
            final int totalSpace;
            if (getOrientation() == VERTICAL) {
                totalSpace = width - getPaddingRight() - getPaddingLeft();
            } else {
                totalSpace = height - getPaddingTop() - getPaddingBottom();
            }
            final int spanCount = Math.max(1, totalSpace / columnWidth);
            setSpanCount(spanCount);
            isColumnWidthChanged = false;
        }
        lastWidth = width;
        lastHeight = height;
        super.onLayoutChildren(recycler, state);
    }
}

I don't actually remember why I choosed to set span count in onLayoutChildren, I wrote this class some time ago. But the point is we need to do so after view get measured. so we can get it's height and width.

EDIT 1: Fix error in code caused to incorrectly setting span count. Thanks user @Elyees Abouda for reporting and suggesting solution.

EDIT 2: Some small refactoring and fix edge case with manual orientation changes handling. Thanks user @tatarize for reporting and suggesting solution.


I accomplished this using a view tree observer to get the width of the recylcerview once rendered and then getting the fixed dimensions of my card view from resources and then setting the span count after doing my calculations. It is only really applicable if the items you are displaying are of a fixed width. This helped me automatically populate the grid regardless of screen size or orientation.

mRecyclerView.getViewTreeObserver().addOnGlobalLayoutListener(
            new ViewTreeObserver.OnGlobalLayoutListener() {
                @Override
                public void onGlobalLayout() {
                    mRecyclerView.getViewTreeObserver().removeOnGlobalLayoutListener(this);
                    int viewWidth = mRecyclerView.getMeasuredWidth();
                    float cardViewWidth = getActivity().getResources().getDimension(R.dimen.cardview_layout_width);
                    int newSpanCount = (int) Math.floor(viewWidth / cardViewWidth);
                    mLayoutManager.setSpanCount(newSpanCount);
                    mLayoutManager.requestLayout();
                }
            });