Spinner onItemSelected called erroneously (without user action)

Question

I have a spinner which I am showing in a dialog view, and the moment the dialog starts onItemSelected is called. I don't really want to process this but only when user makes the selection. So I either need to prevent this (maybe because no default value is set?), or I need to know it is not the user that is making this selection?

Answer 1

Another option in the spirit of Bill Mote's solution is to make the OnItemSelectedListener also an OnTouchListener. The user interaction flag can then be set to true in the onTouch method and reset in onItemSelected() once the selection change has been handled. I prefer this solution because the user interaction flag is handled exclusively for the spinner, and not for other views in the activity that may affect the desired behavior.

In code:

Create your listener for the spinner:

public class SpinnerInteractionListener implements AdapterView.OnItemSelectedListener, View.OnTouchListener {

    boolean userSelect = false;

    @Override
    public boolean onTouch(View v, MotionEvent event) {
        userSelect = true;
        return false;
    }

    @Override
    public void onItemSelected(AdapterView<?> parent, View view, int pos, long id) {
        if (userSelect) { 
            // Your selection handling code here
            userSelect = false;
        }
    }

}

Add the listener to the spinner as both an OnItemSelectedListener and an OnTouchListener:

SpinnerInteractionListener listener = new SpinnerInteractionListener();
mSpinnerView.setOnTouchListener(listener);
mSpinnerView.setOnItemSelectedListener(listener);