Filtering ListView with custom (object) adapter

You need to do a few things:

1) In your activity, register for a text change listener on your EditText that contains the value the user enters:

mSearchValue.addTextChangedListener(searchTextWatcher);

2) Create your searchTextWatcher and have it do something:

private TextWatcher searchTextWatcher = new TextWatcher() {
    @Override
        public void onTextChanged(CharSequence s, int start, int before, int count) {
            // ignore
        }

        @Override
        public void beforeTextChanged(CharSequence s, int start, int count, int after) {
            // ignore
        }

        @Override
        public void afterTextChanged(Editable s) {
            Log.d(Constants.TAG, "*** Search value changed: " + s.toString());
            adapter.getFilter().filter(s.toString());
        }
    };

3) Override getFilter() in your custom adapter and have it filter the results and notify the listview that the dataset has changed.

    @Override
    public Filter getFilter() {
        return new Filter() {
            @SuppressWarnings("unchecked")
            @Override
            protected void publishResults(CharSequence constraint, FilterResults results) {
                Log.d(Constants.TAG, "**** PUBLISHING RESULTS for: " + constraint);
                myData = (List<MyDataType>) results.values;
                MyCustomAdapter.this.notifyDataSetChanged();
            }

            @Override
            protected FilterResults performFiltering(CharSequence constraint) {
                Log.d(Constants.TAG, "**** PERFORM FILTERING for: " + constraint);
                List<MyDataType> filteredResults = getFilteredResults(constraint);

                FilterResults results = new FilterResults();
                results.values = filteredResults;

                return results;
            }
        };
    }

Here an interesting example

public Filter getFilter() {
    return new Filter() {

        @Override
        protected FilterResults performFiltering(CharSequence constraint) {
            final FilterResults oReturn = new FilterResults();
            final ArrayList<station> results = new ArrayList<station>();
            if (orig == null)
                orig = items;
            if (constraint != null) {
                if (orig != null && orig.size() > 0) {
                    for (final station g : orig) {
                        if (g.getName().toLowerCase()
                                .contains(constraint.toString()))
                            results.add(g);
                    }
                }
                oReturn.values = results;
            }
            return oReturn;
        }

        @SuppressWarnings("unchecked")
        @Override
        protected void publishResults(CharSequence constraint,
                FilterResults results) {
            items = (ArrayList<station>) results.values;
            notifyDataSetChanged();
        }
    };
}

public void notifyDataSetChanged() {
    super.notifyDataSetChanged();
    notifyChanged = true;
}

For those who don't need the Filterable interface, there is a much simpler solution. This also handles notifyDataSetChanged() correctly where the other solutions fail. Note that you need to add a getArray() function to the BaseAdapter that just returns the array object that was passed to the constructor.

public abstract class BaseFilterAdapter<T> extends BaseAdapter<T> {

    private List<T> original;
    private String lastFilter;

    public BaseFilterAdapter(Context context, List<T> array) {
        super(context, new LinkedList<T>());
        original = array;
        filter("");
    }

    protected abstract Boolean predicate(T element, String filter);

    public void filter(String filter) {
        lastFilter = filter;
        super.getArray().clear();
        for (T element : original)
            if (predicate(element, filter))
                super.getArray().add(element);
        super.notifyDataSetChanged();
    }

    @Override
    public List<T> getArray() {
        return original;
    }

    @Override
    public void notifyDataSetChanged() {
        filter(lastFilter);
    }
}