Comparing iOS TableView and Android RecyclerView

Exploring the similarities and differences when creating lists on each platform

When it comes down to it, many of the most popular Apps (e.g. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Air BnB, etc.) are simply a list of items. Hence to create such App, having knowledge of how to create and manage lists on both iOS and Android is crucial.

Many times, a developer is only familiar with one platform (either iOS or Android), without realizing the fundamentals of both are very similar. In this piece, I’ll be sharing a fundamental comparison of the basic components in each platform, so one can better understand the other side of the world.

TableView and RecyclerView

In iOS, TableView is the fundamental UIView that shows a list of items and its cell can be recycled for memory efficiency purpose. It is only used for vertical lists (rows) only though. For a more complex view (e.g. showing horizontal list), a CollectionView is needed. However, for simplicity, we’ll just stick with TableView.

Below is a simple example of how I create TableView:

In the code example below, you could see this code loaded in the viewDidLoad() function of the ViewController