Reuse the Action Bar in all the activities of app

Question

I am a newbie to android and I was wondering if someone could guide me about how to reuse the action bar in all of my android activities. As far as I have explored, I found out that we have to make a BaseActivity class and extend it in our Activity where we want to reuse it, and also we have to make a xml layout and include it in our activity xml file. I have finished with the BaseActivity part. Now I am sort of confused in framing the xml part and including it. I know how to merge and include a layout, But in case of Action Bar, what necessary steps are to be taken. Any help would be appreciated.

This is my BaseMenuActivity:

public class BaseMenuActivity extends Activity{

    ActionBar actionBar;
    @Override
    protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        // TODO Auto-generated method stub
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        actionBar = getActionBar();
        actionBar.setDisplayHomeAsUpEnabled(true);
        actionBar.setDisplayShowCustomEnabled(true);
        actionBar.setIcon(R.drawable.ic_social_share);
        LayoutInflater inflator = (LayoutInflater) this
                .getSystemService(Context.LAYOUT_INFLATER_SERVICE);
        View v = inflator.inflate(R.layout.apptitle, null);
        actionBar.setDisplayShowTitleEnabled(false);
        actionBar.setCustomView(v);
    }
}

Manifest part for the same:

<activity
            android:name="com.example.travelplanner.MenuActivity"
            android:screenOrientation="portrait" android:configChanges="orientation|keyboardHidden"
            android:uiOptions="splitActionBarWhenNarrow"
            android:label="WeTrip"
            android:theme="@style/MyTheme" >

Style.xml part:

<style name="MyTheme" parent="@android:style/Theme.Holo.Light">
        <item name="android:actionBarStyle">@style/MyActionBar</item>
    </style>
    <style name="MyActionBar" parent="@android:style/Widget.Holo.Light.ActionBar">
        <item name="android:background">#F0F1F1</item>
        <item name="android:backgroundSplit">#000000</item>
    </style>

MenuActivity.java

public class MenuActivity extends BaseMenuActivity implements OnItemClickListener{

    ActionBar actionBar;
    @Override
    protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        //requestWindowFeature(Window.FEATURE_NO_TITLE);
        setContentView(R.layout.activity_menu);

    @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, menu);
        SearchView searchView = (SearchView) menu.findItem(R.id.menu_action_search).getActionView();
        return true;
    }

    @Override
    public boolean onOptionsItemSelected(MenuItem item) {
        // TODO Auto-generated method stub
        switch(item.getItemId()){
            case R.id.menu_action_search:
            {}
            case R.id.menu_action_locate:
            {}
            case R.id.menu_action_mail:
            {}
            case R.id.menu_action_call:
            {}
        }
        return super.onOptionsItemSelected(item);
    }

}

Answer 1

Well Your code looks good, but if you want to reuse exactly the same ActionBar with the same icons and menus and generally the same functionality in every activity.

You could add the code:

    @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, menu);
        SearchView searchView = (SearchView) menu.findItem(R.id.menu_action_search).getActionView();
        return true;
    }

    @Override
    public boolean onOptionsItemSelected(MenuItem item) {
        // TODO Auto-generated method stub
        switch(item.getItemId()){
            case R.id.menu_action_search:
            {}
            case R.id.menu_action_locate:
            {}
            case R.id.menu_action_mail:
            {}
            case R.id.menu_action_call:
            {}
        }
        return super.onOptionsItemSelected(item);
    }

in your BaseMenuActivity class and your actionbar will be populated the same for every activity that extends from it.

Update:

To create a menu layout you should create a folder 'menu' in your resources folder res/menu. Then create a xml file inside called : some_title.xml

A typical example of a menu xml file is like below:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<menu xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" >

    <item
        android:id="@+id/menu_search"
        android:actionViewClass="com.actionbarsherlock.widget.SearchView"
        android:icon="@drawable/abs__ic_search"
        android:showAsAction="ifRoom|withText|collapseActionView"
        android:title="@string/menu_action_search"/>
    <item
        android:id="@+id/menu_sort"
        android:icon="@drawable/content_sort_icon"
        android:showAsAction="always"
        android:title="@string/menu_action_sort">
    </item>

</menu>

and then inflate that file :

@Override
    public boolean onCreateOptionsMenu(Menu menu) {
        // Inflate the menu; this adds items to the action bar if it is present.
        getMenuInflater().inflate(R.menu.some_title, menu);
        SearchView searchView = (SearchView) menu.findItem(R.id.menu_action_search).getActionView();
        return true;
    }

For some more reading this tutorial is very very good on using ActionBar:

http://www.vogella.com/tutorials/AndroidActionBar/article.html