How to create a ListView and add items to it programmatically without XML?

First, you need to initialize the ListView, then add it to the layout of your activity. You can read about doing this here: How to create a RelativeLayout programmatically with two buttons one on top of the other?

You would create a Layout, then create a ListView and add it to that layout.

Next, you need to create a custom adapter. You can read more about that here: http://developer.android.com/reference/android/widget/ListAdapter.html

For example, you could use an ArrayAdapter. http://developer.android.com/reference/android/widget/ArrayAdapter.html

An ArrayAdapter has a method

public View getView (int pos, View convertView, ViewGroup parent)

This method returns a view to display at position pos in the list. In this method, you would first see if you already have a view for this position (by checking convertView). If you don't, you would generate a new View however you want. You could do this in code, or better yet, you could use an XML file and inflate a view.

After you get your adapter setup, you call setAdapter on your ListView.

So for example, it might look something like this:

@Override
public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState){
    LinearLayout ll = new LinearLayout(this);
    ListView lv = new ListView(this);
    YourAdapter adapter = new YourAdapter(<parameters here>);
    lv.setAdapter(adapter);

    ll.addView(lv, LayoutParams.FILL_PARENT, LayoutParams.FILL_PARENT);
    setContentView(ll);
}