RecyclerView blinking after notifyDatasetChanged()

Question

I have a RecyclerView which loads some data from API, includes an image url and some data, and I use networkImageView to lazy load image.

@Override
public void onResponse(List<Item> response) {
   mItems.clear();
   for (Item item : response) {
      mItems.add(item);
   }
   mAdapter.notifyDataSetChanged();
   mSwipeRefreshLayout.setRefreshing(false);
}

Here is implementation for Adapter:

public void onBindViewHolder(RecyclerView.ViewHolder viewHolder, final int position) {
        if (isHeader(position)) {
            return;
        }
        // - get element from your dataset at this position
        // - replace the contents of the view with that element
        MyViewHolder holder = (MyViewHolder) viewHolder;
        final Item item = mItems.get(position - 1); // Subtract 1 for header
        holder.title.setText(item.getTitle());
        holder.image.setImageUrl(item.getImg_url(), VolleyClient.getInstance(mCtx).getImageLoader());
        holder.image.setErrorImageResId(android.R.drawable.ic_dialog_alert);
        holder.origin.setText(item.getOrigin());
    }

Problem is when we have refresh in the recyclerView, it is blincking for a very short while in the beginning which looks strange.

I just used GridView/ListView instead and it worked as I expected. There were no blincking.

configuration for RecycleView in onViewCreated of my Fragment:

mRecyclerView = (RecyclerView) view.findViewById(R.id.recyclerView);
        // use this setting to improve performance if you know that changes
        // in content do not change the layout size of the RecyclerView
        mRecyclerView.setHasFixedSize(true);

        mGridLayoutManager = (GridLayoutManager) mRecyclerView.getLayoutManager();
        mGridLayoutManager.setSpanSizeLookup(new GridLayoutManager.SpanSizeLookup() {
            @Override
            public int getSpanSize(int position) {
                return mAdapter.isHeader(position) ? mGridLayoutManager.getSpanCount() : 1;
            }
        });

        mRecyclerView.setAdapter(mAdapter);

Anyone faced with such a problem? what could be the reason?

Answer 1

Try using stable IDs in your RecyclerView.Adapter

setHasStableIds(true) and override getItemId(int position).

Without stable IDs, after notifyDataSetChanged(), ViewHolders usually assigned to not to same positions. That was the reason of blinking in my case.

You can find a good explanation here.