Background
many apps (including google plus and facebook) have an action bar item showing the number of in-app-events (or "notifications").
This action item has a number within it and you can click it in order to show the events the app has for the user.
something like that (taken from here) :
The problem
I wish to make it work on old android versions, so i use actionBarSherlock.
Sadly, each solution i use has its disadvantages, and i couldn't find any solution here (on stackOverflow) that handles this with actionBarSherlock (found other solutions, but not with this library).
I've also found a post about it (here) , claiming it's an issue on this library, but it's very old and seems to be closed and marked as fixed, but I can't find out how to use it now.
What I've tried
i've tried the next solutions:
- actionLayout . it showed fine, but clicking on it didn't show the clicking effect.
- actionViewClass - it didn't even work for some reason.
- adding the menu item and its view programmatically.
The question
What's the best way to achieve this ?
EDIT: this is what i've tried using actionLayout :
"action_item_notification.xml" - for now it's the same as "abs__action_menu_item_layout.xml" (here). later i will add a textView to hold the number of notifications.
in the menu xml file, i have this as one of the items:
<item
android:id="@+id/activity_main__menuItem_notifications"
android:actionLayout="@layout/action_item_notification"
android:icon="@drawable/notification_button"
android:showAsAction="always"
android:title="@string/notifications"/>
not only it doesn't show the icon, but long clicking on the item will crash the app, with a NPE on the ActionMenuItemView.java file.
EDIT:ok, so i've found a solution that is almost perfect.
it shows the action item nicely and it even reacts to clicking as the other action items.
I've sadly had one missing feature - long clicking on action item to show the toast of its title. sadly, i couldn't find a way to overcome this so what i did (that works) is handling the long clicking on the view itself, and call a similar code that is used for ActionMenuItemView::onLongClick .
if anyone has a better and nicer solution, please write it down.
i've written this solution in a new answer here.
here's my solution, but it's a bit messy and calls the same code of showing a toast for the action item as the one of actionBarSherlock.
if anyone has a better, cleaner solution, please write it down.
menu file (activity_main.xml) :
...
<item
android:id="@+id/activity_main__menuItem_notifications"
android:showAsAction="always"
android:title="@string/notifications"/>
...
MainActivity.java :
public boolean onCreateOptionsMenu(...){
...
getSupportMenuInflater().inflate(R.menu.activity_main, menu);
//
final MenuItem notificationsMenuItem = menu.findItem(R.id.activity_main__menuItem_notifications);
notificationsMenuItem.setActionView(R.layout.action_item_notification);
setEnableLongClickOnCustomActionItem(notificationsMenuItem,true);
...
public static void setEnableLongClickOnCustomActionItem(final MenuItem menuItem, final boolean enable) {
final View actionView = menuItem.getActionView();
if (actionView == null)
return;
final CharSequence title = menuItem.getTitle();
if (!enable || Strings.isEmpty(title))
actionView.setOnLongClickListener(null);
actionView.setOnLongClickListener(new OnLongClickListener() {
@Override
public boolean onLongClick(final View v) {
final int[] screenPos = new int[2];
final Rect displayFrame = new Rect();
actionView.getLocationOnScreen(screenPos);
actionView.getWindowVisibleDisplayFrame(displayFrame);
final Context context = actionView.getContext();
final int width = actionView.getWidth();
final int height = actionView.getHeight();
final int midy = screenPos[1] + height / 2;
final int screenWidth = context.getResources().getDisplayMetrics().widthPixels;
final Toast cheatSheet = Toast.makeText(context, title, Toast.LENGTH_SHORT);
if (midy < displayFrame.height()) {
// Show along the top; follow action buttons
cheatSheet.setGravity(Gravity.TOP | Gravity.RIGHT, screenWidth - screenPos[0] - width / 2, height);
} else {
// Show along the bottom center
cheatSheet.setGravity(Gravity.BOTTOM | Gravity.CENTER_HORIZONTAL, 0, height);
}
cheatSheet.show();
return true;
}
});
layout file of the action item ( action_item_notification.xml) :
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools"
style="?attr/actionButtonStyle"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:addStatesFromChildren="true"
android:focusable="true" >
<ImageView
android:id="@+id/imageView1"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_gravity="center"
android:adjustViewBounds="true"
android:background="@null"
android:focusable="false"
android:scaleType="fitCenter"
android:src="@drawable/notification_button" />
<TextView
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_alignBottom="@+id/imageView1"
android:layout_alignRight="@+id/imageView1"
android:background="@drawable/action_item_notification_counter_background"
android:paddingLeft="1dp"
android:paddingRight="1dp"
android:text="88"
android:textColor="#FFffffff"
tools:ignore="HardcodedText" />
</RelativeLayout>
and a nice drawable for the background of the textView ("action_item_notification_counter_background.xml") :
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<shape xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:shape="oval" >
<solid android:color="#FFff0000" />
</shape>
I found an easier way to solve your problem - which I also had, with my final struggle being also the toast.
So, to solve the toast problem as simply as possible, just do as follow :
final Menu m = menu;
final MenuItem item = m.findItem(R.id.item);
final View actionView = item.getActionView();
actionView.setOnLongClickListener(new View.OnLongClickListener() {
@Override
public boolean onLongClick(View v) {
Toast toast = Toast.makeText(CWalletOffersFragment.this.getContext(), item.getTitle(), Toast.LENGTH_SHORT);
toast.setGravity(Gravity.TOP, v.getRight(),v.getBottom());
toast.show();
return true;
}
});
The position is a bit off, but not by much (you could still tweak it with an offset if you like). I really did not want to write lines upon lines of code for something so simple, so I think this is a worthy tradeoff :) !