so i think i figured it out with a little inspiration from RobGThai's answer, i'm posting the code for anyone else to see, i guess i didn't really use a custom adapter
This is the super simple example that got me started, so once i had this, I made sure my "MyObject" had a toString() method on it to show properly in the list and i passed the MyObject[] array into the "new ArrayAdapter" constructor instead of listItems
FooList.java
import android.app.ListActivity;
import android.os.Bundle;
import android.widget.ArrayAdapter;
public class FooList extends ListActivity {
String[] listItems = {"item 1", "item 2 ", "list", "android", "item 3", "foobar", "bar", };
@Override
public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
setContentView(R.layout.temp);
setListAdapter(new ArrayAdapter(this, android.R.layout.simple_list_item_1, listItems));
}
}
the layout xml i used (temp.xml)
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:orientation="vertical" android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="fill_parent">
<ListView android:id="@android:id/list" android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content" />
<TextView android:id="@android:id/empty" android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:text="Empty set" />
</LinearLayout>