Android Option Menu-Android Tutorial

The options menu is the primary collection of menu items for an activity. It's where you should place actions that have a global impact on the app, such as "Search," "Compose email," and "Settings." Here, we are going to see two examples of option menus. Here, we are inflating the menu by calling the inflate() method of MenuInflater class. To perform event handling on menu items, you need to override onOptionsItemSelected() method of Activity class.Let's see how to create menu in android. Let's see the simple option menu example that contains two menu items.

activity_main.xml

<RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools" android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="match_parent" android:paddingLeft="@dimen/activity_horizontal_margin"
    android:paddingRight="@dimen/activity_horizontal_margin"
    android:paddingTop="@dimen/activity_vertical_margin"
    android:paddingBottom="@dimen/activity_vertical_margin" tools:context=".MainActivity">

    <TextView android:text="@string/hello_world" android:layout_width="wrap_content"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content" />
    
</RelativeLayout>

 

 

menu_main.xml

It is created automatically inside the res/menu directory.Let us add two items in menu_main

<menu xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    xmlns:app="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto"
    xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools" tools:context=".MainActivity">  <item android:id="@+id/item1" android:title="menu item_1"
        android:orderInCategory="100" app:showAsAction="never" />
    <item android:id="@+id/item2" android:title="menu_item 2"
        android:orderInCategory="101" app:showAsAction="never" />

</menu>

MainActivity.java

public class MainActivity extends ActionBarActivity {

    @Override
    protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);
    }


    @Override
    public boolean onCreateOptionsMenu(Menu menu) {
        // Inflate the menu; this adds items to the action bar if it is present.
        getMenuInflater().inflate(R.menu.menu_main, menu);//Menu Resource, Menu
        return true;
    }
    @Override
    public boolean onOptionsItemSelected(MenuItem item) {
        switch (item.getItemId()) {
            case R.id.item1:
                Toast.makeText(getApplicationContext(),"Item 1 Selected",Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show();
                return true;
            case R.id.item2:
                Toast.makeText(getApplicationContext(),"Item 2 Selected",Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show();
                return true;
               default:
                return super.onOptionsItemSelected(item);
        }
    }

}

Now hit the on RUN button and lanch your application.Click on Menu icon or your back button.

Just press on any item on menu.You can see the toast message

Add Icons to Option Menu Items

You need to have icon images inside the res/drawable directory. The android:icon element is used to display the icon on the option menu.Copy your icons to res/drawable folder.

  menu_main.xml

<menu xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    xmlns:app="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto"
    xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools" tools:context=".MainActivity">
    <item android:id="@+id/item1"
        android:title="menu item_1"
        android:icon="@drawable/icon1"
        android:orderInCategory="100"
        app:showAsAction="never" />
    <item
        android:id="@+id/item2"
        android:title="menu_item 2"
        android:icon="@drawable/icon2"
        android:orderInCategory="101"
        app:showAsAction="never" />

</menu>