Q:

ListView from XML with custom ImageView

I'm populating a layout from an XML. I don't really understand the tutorial so I can only get TextViews populated. How do I dynamically assign an image resource to the ImageView each list item has?
What I'm currently doing:
    ArrayList<HashMap<String, String>> menuItems = new ArrayList<HashMap<String, String>>();

    XMLParser parser = new XMLParser();
    String xml = parser.getXmlFromResource(getApplicationContext(),
            R.raw.symbols);
    Document doc = parser.getDomElement(xml); // getting DOM element

    NodeList nl = doc.getElementsByTagName(KEY_SYMBOL);
    // looping through all item nodes <item>
    for (int i = 0; i < nl.getLength(); i++) {
        // creating new HashMap
        HashMap<String, String> map = new HashMap<String, String>();
        Element e = (Element) nl.item(i);
        // adding each child node to HashMap key => value
        map.put(KEY_NAME, parser.getValue(e, KEY_NAME));
        map.put(KEY_FILENAME, parser.getValue(e, KEY_FILENAME));
        map.put(KEY_ABBR, parser.getValue(e, KEY_ABBR));
        map.put(KEY_ELEMENT, parser.getValue(e, KEY_ELEMENT));

        // adding HashList to ArrayList
        menuItems.add(map);
    }

    // Adding menuItems to ListView
    ListAdapter adapter = new SimpleAdapter(this, menuItems,
            R.layout.symbol_list_item, new String[] { KEY_NAME,
                    KEY_FILENAME, KEY_ABBR, KEY_ELEMENT }, new int[] {
                    R.id.name, R.id.filename, R.id.abbr, R.id.element });

    setListAdapter(adapter);

And if it matters, I'm not simply setting a drawable for an ImageView. I'm using the custom SVGImageView from the androidSVG library. What I have working on a different activity for dynamically pulling the SVG file is this:
symbolImageView = (SVGImageView) findViewById(R.id.symbolImage);
symbolImageView.setImageResource(this.getResources().getIdentifier(symbol.getFilename(), "raw", this.getPackageName()));

And this is what it looks like currently with my placeholder ImageViews:

A:

Just to have the answer up, your issue was in lacking an adapter that determined the view in the list and dynamically set that view's background. The Simple Adapter provided by Android doesn't really expand past the basics. It takes a list and represents it visually on the screen, there isn't a lot of flexibility with it. However, you can create a class that extends an Adapter, like BaseAdapter, and then expands on its basic functionality. This is mostly done in getView(). A basic layout is something like:
public class ListAdapter extends BaseAdapter {
    Context context;
    int resource;
    List<Item> items = new List<Item>();

public ListAdapter(Context context, int resource, List<Item> items) {
    super(context, resource, items);
    this.context = context;
    this.resource = resource;
    this.items = items;
}

@Override
public View getView(int position, View convertView, ViewGroup parent) {
    if(convertView == null){
        LayoutInflater inflater = (LayoutInflater) context.getSystemService(Context.LAYOUT_INFLATER_SERVICE);
        convertView = inflater.inflate(resource, parent, false);
    }

    // Dynamically work with each view in the list
}

A more complex example can be seen in this stack answer Custom Adapter for List View

