Android Action Bar SearchView as Autocomplete?

Question

I am using a SearchView in the Action Bar. I want to use autocomplete feature on the search view to get results from the database.

Is this possible? Or do I need to use a custom text box and then add autocomplete to that?

Answer 1

So I just had to do this for the v7 version and was dismayed to find that I cannot simply set the adapter with an ArrayAdapter.

I did not want to use a stock AutoCompleteTextView (as the top commenter here does), because then you're missing out on a number of snazzy features of SearchView, like the little search icon and x button.

So I extended SearchView and got this:

public class ArrayAdapterSearchView extends SearchView {

private SearchView.SearchAutoComplete mSearchAutoComplete;

public ArrayAdapterSearchView(Context context) {
    super(context);
    initialize();
}

public ArrayAdapterSearchView(Context context, AttributeSet attrs) {
    super(context, attrs);
    initialize();
}

public void initialize() {
    mSearchAutoComplete = (SearchAutoComplete) findViewById(android.support.v7.appcompat.R.id.search_src_text);
    this.setAdapter(null);
    this.setOnItemClickListener(null);
}

@Override
public void setSuggestionsAdapter(CursorAdapter adapter) {
    // don't let anyone touch this
}

public void setOnItemClickListener(OnItemClickListener listener) {
    mSearchAutoComplete.setOnItemClickListener(listener);
}

public void setAdapter(ArrayAdapter<?> adapter) {
    mSearchAutoComplete.setAdapter(adapter);
}

public void setText(String text) {
    mSearchAutoComplete.setText(text);
}

}

You can use this in your menu xml for the ActionBar like so:

<menu xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    xmlns:app="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto" >

<item
    android:id="@+id/action_search"
    android:icon="@android:drawable/ic_menu_add"
    android:title="TITLE"
    app:actionViewClass="com.yourpackage.ArrayAdapterSearchView"
    app:showAsAction="ifRoom|collapseActionView"/>

</menu>

You may also want to add click functionality to the autocomplete list (for example, setting the text to the EditText):

MenuItem searchItem = menu.findItem(R.id.action_search);
final ArrayAdapterSearchView searchView = (ArrayAdapterSearchView)searchItem.getActionView();
searchView.setOnItemClickListener(new OnItemClickListener() {
    @Override
    public void onItemClick(AdapterView<?> parent, View view, int position, long id) {

        searchView.setText(adapter.getItem(position).toString());

    }
});

And here is a similar version for the regular old android.widget.SearchView:

public class ArrayAdapterSearchView extends SearchView {

private AutoCompleteTextView mSearchAutoComplete;

public ArrayAdapterSearchView(Context context) {
    super(context);
    initialize();
}

public ArrayAdapterSearchView(Context context, AttributeSet attrs) {
    super(context, attrs);
    initialize();
}

public void initialize() {
    mSearchAutoComplete = (AutoCompleteTextView) findViewById(getResources().getIdentifier("android:id/search_src_text", null, null));
    setAutoCompleSuggestionsAdapter(null);
    setOnItemClickListener(null);
}

@Override
public void setSuggestionsAdapter(CursorAdapter adapter) {
    throw new UnsupportedOperationException("Please use setAutoCompleSuggestionsAdapter(ArrayAdapter<?> adapter) instead");
}

public void setOnItemClickListener(AdapterView.OnItemClickListener listener) {
    mSearchAutoComplete.setOnItemClickListener(listener);
}

public void setAutoCompleSuggestionsAdapter(ArrayAdapter<?> adapter) {
    mSearchAutoComplete.setAdapter(adapter);
}

public void setText(String text) {
    mSearchAutoComplete.setText(text);
}

}