When and how often is the onPrepareOptionsMenu() method called for ActionBar?

android menu android-actionbar
Eugene picture Eugene · Oct 5, 2011 · Viewed 17k times · Source

It is clear for Activities - the method is being called right before the menu is shown. But what about ActionBar when it is always shown? How to trigger it to be invoked to dynamically update menuItems?

Answer

PH7 picture PH7 · Oct 5, 2011

Use invalidateOptionsMenu() to trigger onPrepareOptionMenu() method as suggested by document.

On Android 3.0 and higher, you must call invalidateOptionsMenu() when you want to update the menu, because the menu is always open. The system will then call onPrepareOptionsMenu() so you can update the menu items.

Related questions

How to update a menu item shown in the ActionBar?

I have an Activity that has 2 fragments. Both are ListFragments and both contribute MenuItems to the Menu. I have one MenuItem that I've set the attribute android:showAsAction to have it show as a button on the ActionBar. Which works …

Read More
Android Actionbar items as three dots

I have a menu for my main activity (res/menu/main_menu.xml) and I want only one item on the Actionbar and the rest shall be hidden under three dots menu. The problem is, I never see the three …

Read More
How can I refresh the ActionBar when onPrepareOptionsMenu switched menu entries?

Within my apps I often enable/disable menu entries and do make them visible from onPrepareOptionsMenu. Today I started to add the android:showAsAction menu attribute to some of my Android 2.x apps to show menu entries used most on …

Read More