How to add Action bar options menu in Android Fragments

Question

I am trying to have a options menu in Android Fragments. ActionBar options menu are not displaying in my Fragments.

Here is my code and I have both onCreateOptionsMenu() and onOptionSelected() function. My code doesn't shows any error. But options menu are not displaying.

package org.reachout;

import android.os.Bundle;
import android.support.v4.app.Fragment;
import android.view.LayoutInflater;
import android.view.View;
import android.view.ViewGroup;
import android.widget.LinearLayout;

import org.general.R;

public class ViewMessageFragment extends Fragment {

    /* (non-Javadoc)
     * @see android.support.v4.app.Fragment#onCreateView(android.view.LayoutInflater, android.view.ViewGroup, android.os.Bundle)
     */
    @Override
    public View onCreateView(LayoutInflater inflater, ViewGroup container,
            Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        if (container == null) {
            // We have different layouts, and in one of them this
            // fragment's containing frame doesn't exist.  The fragment
            // may still be created from its saved state, but there is
            // no reason to try to create its view hierarchy because it
            // won't be displayed.  Note this is not needed -- we could
            // just run the code below, where we would create and return
            // the view hierarchy; it would just never be used.
            return null;
        }
        return (LinearLayout)inflater.inflate(R.layout.viewmessages_tab_fragment_layout, container, false);
    }

    @Override
    public void onCreateOptionsMenu(Menu menu, MenuInflater inflater) {
        // TODO Auto-generated method stub
        super.onCreateOptionsMenu(menu, inflater);
        inflater.inflate(R.menu.askexperts_menu, menu);
    }

    @Override
    public boolean onOptionsItemSelected(MenuItem item) {
       // handle item selection
       switch (item.getItemId()) {
          case R.id.action_settings:
             // do s.th.
             return true;
          default:
             return super.onOptionsItemSelected(item);
       }
    }   

}

Answer 1

You need to call setHasOptionsMenu(true) in onCreate().

For backwards compatibility it's better to place this call as late as possible at the end of onCreate() or even later in onActivityCreated() or something like that.

See: https://developer.android.com/reference/android/app/Fragment.html#setHasOptionsMenu(boolean)