Actionbar Sherlock Search Widget expand does not work

Question

I'm using Actionbar Sherlock. The activity be shown on startup should start in a "search mode" to start searching immediately. For doing so I use the following code:

@Override
public boolean onCreateOptionsMenu(Menu menu) {
    super.onCreateOptionsMenu(menu);

    //collapse search
    MenuItem searchItem = menu.add(Menu.NONE, R.string.inlineSearch, Menu.NONE, getString(R.string.inlineSearch)).setIcon(R.drawable.menu_search);
    searchItem.setShowAsAction(MenuItem.SHOW_AS_ACTION_ALWAYS);
    searchView = new SearchView(this);
    searchItem.setActionView(new SearchView(this));
    searchItem.expandActionView();
    return true;
}

The SearchView is the View provided by Android / Actionbar Sherlock.

The problem I'm facing with that is that no matter what I do, the item is never expanded on startup. I tried calling the expandActionView method after startup by using another actionbar item, nothing changed. I implemented my own View implementing CollapsibleActionView, but the methods onActionViewExpanded() and onActionViewCollapsed() never get called.

But if I click the collapsed button of the SearchView, the view expands as expected.

Does anyone know what I'm doing wrong? Thanks for your help!

Answer 1

After going through the source documentation I finally found the answer by myself. menuItem.expandActionView() only takes effect if the MenuItem has set the following flag: searchItem.setShowAsAction(MenuItem.SHOW_AS_ACTION_COLLAPSE_ACTION_VIEW);

Hope that helps somebody out there!