Action Bar - Menu Button - Missing

Question

I have managed to mess up one my Android projects, by removing something (i suspect). Below are my manifests and menu resource's. For some reason my action bar is not displaying the menu button when I run the application.

<menu xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
<item android:id="@+id/menu_settings"
    android:title="@string/menu_settings"
    android:orderInCategory="100"
    android:showAsAction="never" />
</menu>

Manifest:

<manifest xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
package="com.myapp"
android:versionCode="6"
android:versionName="2.1.0" >

<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.WRITE_SETTINGS"/>
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.INTERNET"/>
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.ACCESS_NETWORK_STATE"/>

<uses-sdk
    android:minSdkVersion="8"
    android:targetSdkVersion="15" />

<application
    android:icon="@drawable/ic_launcher"
    android:label="@string/app_name"
    android:theme="@style/AppTheme" >
    <activity
        android:name=".MyActivity"
        android:label="@string/title_activity" 
        android:screenOrientation="portrait">
        <intent-filter>
            <action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN" />

            <category android:name="android.intent.category.LAUNCHER" />
        </intent-filter>
    </activity>
</application>

</manifest>

I also have this in my Activity code

    @Override
public boolean onCreateOptionsMenu(Menu menu) {
    getMenuInflater().inflate(R.menu.activity, menu);
    return true;
}

@Override
public boolean onOptionsItemSelected(MenuItem item) {
    // Handle item selection
    switch (item.getItemId()) {
        case R.id.menu_settings:
            return true;
        default:
            return super.onOptionsItemSelected(item);
    }
}

But still no menu/option button is created when the application runs. Any idea's?

Edit 1

After some major trial an error i have discovered that adding localization support to my application has caused the issue.

I removed the all localized values-* directories and the Action Bar came back, i then copied the values directory to values-en and ran it on my English device. The action bar then disappeared. Does this shed any light for anyone?

Answer 1

Ok, found out what was causing the issue and I probably hadn't provided enough info in my original post if someone had previously come across this issue.

The fatal mistake i had made was

cp -r res/values res/value-en

I did this for all the locales, this also copied the styles.xml file. Having this in the directory caused this very annoying headache!

Removing it and only having the styles.xml file in the res/values directory and res/values-v* directories fixed the issue.

Answer 2

The on-screen overflow menu button only appears in the action bar on devices that lack an off-screen MENU button. Try pressing the MENU button on your device or emulator.

Answer 3

I think your onCreateOptionsMenu - MenuInflater is the issue, change to the following and see if that works for you:

public boolean onCreateOptionsMenu(Menu menu) {
    MenuInflater inflater = getMenuInflater();
    inflater.inflate(R.menu.activity, menu);
    return true;
}

Answer 4

 android:showAsAction="never" 

Change this line to:

 android:showAsAction="ifRoom"