Professional Android 4 Application Development

Creating and Using Menus and Action Bar Action Items x 381
LISTING 10-12: Making a Menu Item an action
menuItem.setShowAsAction(MenuItem.SHOW_AS_ACTION_IF_ROOM |
MenuItem.SHOW_AS_ACTION_WITH_TEXT);
code snippet PA4AD_Ch10_ActionBar/src/ActionBarActivity.java
Menu Item Options
Android supports most of the traditional Menu Item options you’re probably familiar with, including
icons, shortcuts, check boxes, and radio buttons, as listed here:
‰ Check boxes — Check boxes on Menu Items are visible in the overflow and expanded menus,
as well as within submenus. To set a Menu Item as a check box, use the setCheckable
method. The state of that check box is controlled via setChecked.
// Create a new check box item.
menu.add(0, CHECKBOX_ITEM, Menu.NONE, “CheckBox”).setCheckable(true);
‰ Radio buttons — A radio button group is a group of items displaying circular buttons, in
which only one item can be selected at any given time. Checking one of these items will automatically
uncheck any checked item in the same group.
To create a radio button group, assign the same group identifier to each item and then call
Menu.setGroupCheckable, passing in that group identifier and setting the exclusive parameter
to true:
// Create a radio button group.
menu.add(RB_GROUP, RADIOBUTTON_1, Menu.NONE, “Radiobutton 1”);
menu.add(RB_GROUP, RADIOBUTTON_2, Menu.NONE, “Radiobutton 2”);
menu.add(RB_GROUP, RADIOBUTTON_3, Menu.NONE,
“Radiobutton 3”).setChecked(true);
menu.setGroupCheckable(RB_GROUP, true, true);
‰ Shortcut keys — You can specify a keyboard shortcut for a Menu Item by using the
setShortcut method. Each call to setShortcut requires two shortcut keys — one for
use with the numeric keypad and another to support a full keyboard. Neither key is
case-sensitive.
// Add a shortcut to this Menu Item, ‘0’ if using the numeric keypad
// or ‘b’ if using the full keyboard.
menuItem.setShortcut(‘0’, ‘b’);
‰ Condensed titles — The setTitleCondensed method lets you specify text to be displayed
only in the icon menu or as Action Bar actions. The normal title will only be used when the
Menu Item is displayed in the overflow or extended menu.
menuItem.setTitleCondensed(“Short Title”);