What is the size of ActionBar in pixels?

Question

I need to know the exact size of ActionBar in pixels so to apply correct background image.

Answer 1

To retrieve the height of the ActionBar in XML, just use

?android:attr/actionBarSize

or if you're an ActionBarSherlock or AppCompat user, use this

?attr/actionBarSize

If you need this value at runtime, use this

final TypedArray styledAttributes = getContext().getTheme().obtainStyledAttributes(
                    new int[] { android.R.attr.actionBarSize });
mActionBarSize = (int) styledAttributes.getDimension(0, 0);
styledAttributes.recycle();

If you need to understand where this is defined:

1. The attribute name itself is defined in the platform's /res/values/attrs.xml
2. The platform's themes.xml picks this attribute and assigns a value to it.
3. The value assigned in step 2 depends on different device sizes, which are defined in various dimens.xml files in the platform, ie. core/res/res/values-sw600dp/dimens.xml