Android Spinner: Get the selected item change even

Question

How can you set the event listener for a Spinner when the selected item changes?

Basically what I am trying to do is something similar to this:

spinner1.onSelectionChange = handleSelectionChange;

void handleSelectionChange(Object sender){
    //handle event
}

Answer 1

take a global variable for current selection of spinner:

int currentItem = 0;

spinner_counter = (Spinner)findViewById(R.id.spinner_counter);
String[] value={"20","40","60","80","100","All"};
aa=new ArrayAdapter<String>(this,R.layout.spinner_item_profile,value);
aa.setDropDownViewResource(android.R.layout.simple_spinner_dropdown_item);
spinner_counter.setAdapter(aa);

spinner_counter.setOnItemSelectedListener(new AdapterView.OnItemSelectedListener() {
        @Override
        public void onItemSelected(AdapterView<?> parent, View view, int position, long id) {
            if(currentItem == position){
                return; //do nothing
            }
            else
            {
                 TextView spinner_item_text = (TextView) view;
                 //write your code here
            }
            currentItem = position;
        }

        @Override
        public void onNothingSelected(AdapterView<?> parent) {

        }
    });

//R.layout.spinner_item_profile
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

<TextView  android:id="@+id/spinner_item_text"
xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:layout_width="match_parent" 
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:background="@drawable/border_close_profile"
android:gravity="start"  
android:textColor="@color/black"         
android:paddingLeft="5dip"
android:paddingStart="5dip"
android:paddingTop="12dip"
android:paddingBottom="12dip"
/>

//drawable/border_close_profile
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<layer-list xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
  <item>
   <shape android:shape="rectangle">
    <solid android:color="#e2e3d7" />
   </shape>
 </item>
<item android:left="1dp"
android:right="1dp"
android:top="1dp"
android:bottom="1dp">
<shape android:shape="rectangle">
    <solid android:color="@color/white_text" />
</shape>
</item>
</layer-list>

Answer 2

Find your spinner name and find id then implement this method.

spinnername.setOnItemSelectedListener(new OnItemSelectedListener() {

    @Override
    public void onItemSelected(AdapterView<?> parentView, View selectedItemView, int position, long id) {
        // your code here
    }

    @Override
    public void onNothingSelected(AdapterView<?> parentView) {
        // your code here
    }
});

Answer 3

It doesn't matter will you set OnItemSelectedListener in onCreate or onStart - it will still be called during of Activity creation or start (respectively).
So we can set it in onCreate (and NOT in onStart!).
Just add a flag to figure out first initialisation:

private Spinner mSpinner;
private boolean mSpinnerInitialized;

then in onCreate (or onCreateView) just:

mSpinner.setOnItemSelectedListener(new AdapterView.OnItemSelectedListener() {
            public void onItemSelected(AdapterView<?> adapterView, View view, int i, long l) {
                if (!mSpinnerInitialized) {
                    mSpinnerInitialized = true;
                    return;
                }

                // do stuff
            }

            public void onNothingSelected(AdapterView<?> adapterView) {
                return;
            }
        });

Answer 4

Brilliant the above by Stefan Klumpp also helped me a lot. Thank you. I am a newbie and the "@Override"s in it caused an error about "must override a Super class method of the same name". Eclipse suggested I should remove the Overrides. When I did this, it worked. Please don't ask me how or why.

Answer 5

One trick I found was putting your setOnItemSelectedListeners in onWindowFocusChanged instead of onCreate. I haven't found any bad side-effects to doing it this way, yet. Basically, set up the listeners after the window gets drawn. I'm not sure how often onWindowFocusChanged runs, but it's easy enough to create yourself a lock variable if you are finding it running too often.

I think Android might be using a message-based processing system, and if you put it all in onCreate, you may run into situations where the spinner gets populated after it gets drawn. So, your listener will fire off after you set the item location. This is an educated guess, of course, but feel free to correct me on this.

Answer 6

You can implement AdapterView.OnItemSelectedListener class in your Activity.

And then use the below line within onCreate()

Spinner spin = (Spinner) findViewById(R.id.spinner);
spin.setOnItemSelectedListener(this);

Then override these two methods:

public void onItemSelected(AdapterView<?> parent, View v, int position, long id) {
    selection.setText(items[position]);
}

public void onNothingSelected(AdapterView<?> parent) {
    selection.setText("");
}