Expand and give focus to SearchView automatically

Question

I'm developing an application where the user presses the "Search" icon in the ActionBar and a SearchView is made visible at the top of the screen.

My problem is that the SearchView is not in focus nor expanded so the user has to press the search button on the Searchview to make it expand and bring out the keyboard.

How should this be solved?

Answer 1

You can also call to expandActionView() method in order to force it:

@Override
public boolean onCreateOptionsMenu( Menu menu )
{
    super.onCreateOptionsMenu( menu );

    MenuItem searchMenuItem = menu.findItem( R.id.mi_search ); // get my MenuItem with placeholder submenu
    searchMenuItem.expandActionView(); // Expand the search menu item in order to show by default the query

    return true;
}

Search item in the Action Bar layout:

<item
        android:id="@+id/mi_search"
        android:icon="@drawable/abs__ic_search_api_holo_light"
        android:title="@string/search"
        android:showAsAction="ifRoom|collapseActionView"
        android:actionViewClass="com.actionbarsherlock.widget.SearchView"
        />