GridLayoutManager setSpanSizeLookup creating blank cells

Question

currently I'm exploring more on RecyclerView and GridLayoutManager and trying to achieve a nice looking UI for gallery display but I'm having some trouble with the span size of the GridLayoutManager. As documentation said: By default, each item occupies 1 span. You can change it by providing a custom GridLayoutManager.SpanSizeLookup instance via setSpanSizeLookup(SpanSizeLookup).

With this I expect that if I set the span to 2 of the item in position 0 it will set the colspan and the rowspan to 2 as well but it seems that it doesn't work that way. I set my column count into 2 for my GridLayoutManager for portrait and 4 for landscape. It works perfectly for portrait but not in landscape as it creates 2 empty cells below the 2nd and 3rd item in which I guess that the 1st item doesn't get the rowspan of 2 or else it really leaves an empty cells.

Here's my code:

gallery = new ArrayList<HashMap<String, String>>();
        adapter = new GalleryAdapter(getBaseContext(), gallery);

        // using grid layout manager
        GridLayoutManager mLayoutManager = new GridLayoutManager(this, getResources().getInteger(R.integer.col_count));

        mLayoutManager.setSpanSizeLookup(new GridLayoutManager.SpanSizeLookup() {
            @Override
            public int getSpanSize(int position) {
                switch(adapter.getItemViewType(position)){
                    case 2:
                        return 2;
                    case 1:
                        return 1;
                    default:
                        return -1;
                }
            }
        });

        list_news.setLayoutManager(mLayoutManager);
        list_news.setAdapter(adapter);

The Adapter:

public class GalleryAdapter extends RecyclerView.Adapter<GalleryAdapter.ViewHolder> {

    Context context;
    ArrayList<HashMap<String, String>> article;
    ImageLoader mImageLoader;

    @Override
    public int getItemCount() {
        return article.size();
    }

    public GalleryAdapter(Context context, ArrayList<HashMap<String, String>> article){
        this.context = context;
        this.article = article;
    }

    // Create new views (invoked by the layout manager)
    @Override
    public GalleryAdapter.ViewHolder onCreateViewHolder(ViewGroup parent, int viewType) {
        // create a new view
        View v = LayoutInflater.from(parent.getContext()).inflate(R.layout.articles_item, parent, false);
        // set the view's size, margins, paddings and layout parameters
        ViewHolder vh = new ViewHolder(v);
        return vh;
    }

    @Override
    public int getItemViewType(int position) {
        // Just as an example, return 0 or 2 depending on position
        // Note that unlike in ListView adapters, types don't have to be contiguous
        if(position==0){
            return 2;
        }else{
            return 1;
        }
    }

    // Replace the contents of a view (invoked by the layout manager)
    @Override
    public void onBindViewHolder(ViewHolder holder, int position) {
        // - get element from your dataset at this position
        // - replace the contents of the view with that element
        mImageLoader = VolleyQueue.getInstance(context).getImageLoader();
        holder.image.setImageUrl(article.get(position).get("image"), mImageLoader);
        holder.image.setDefaultImageResId(R.drawable.test);
    }

    static class ViewHolder extends RecyclerView.ViewHolder {
        @Bind(R.id.image) NetworkImageView image;

        public ViewHolder(View view) {
            super(view);
            ButterKnife.bind(this, view);
    }



}
}

And here's the result screenshot for landscape and portrait:

is there's any way I can avoid having blank cells for this?

UPDATE:

to better visualize on what I'm trying to achieve here's an image of what I would want the landscape mode to be. The numbers are the items based on the expected position.

Answer 1

Change your SpanSizeLookup code into

mLayoutManager.setSpanSizeLookup(new GridLayoutManager.SpanSizeLookup() {
    @Override
    public int getSpanSize(int position) {
        return adapter.getItemViewType(position);
    }
});

And your adapter's getItemViewType code into

@Override
public int getItemViewType(int position) {
    if (position == 0) {
        return context.getResources().getInteger(R.integer.col_count);
    } else {
        return 1;
    }
}