app:showAsAction ifRoom is not working on appcompat action bar

Question

I have an action bar with the following menu items;

<menu xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    xmlns:app="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto"
    xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools"
    tools:context="com.blah.blah.app.ClientActivity" >

    <item android:id="@+id/action_search"
        android:icon="@drawable/search"
        android:title="@string/action_search"
        android:orderInCategory="1"
        app:showAsAction="ifRoom|withText"/>

    <item android:id="@+id/action_settings"
        android:title="@string/action_settings"
        android:orderInCategory="5"
        app:showAsAction="ifRoom"/>

    <item android:id="@+id/action_waiter"
        android:title="@string/action_waiter"
        android:orderInCategory="6"
        app:showAsAction="ifRoom"/>

    <item android:id="@+id/action_cleantable"
        android:title="@string/action_cleantable"
        android:orderInCategory="7"
        app:showAsAction="ifRoom"/>

    <item android:id="@+id/action_suggest"
        android:title="@string/action_suggest"
        android:orderInCategory="8"
        app:showAsAction="ifRoom"/>

    <item android:id="@+id/action_waiterlogin"
        android:title="@string/action_waiterlogin"
        android:orderInCategory="9"
        app:showAsAction="ifRoom"/>
</menu>

The problem is my search button doesn't show on action bar but the text is showed in overflow. There's plenty of room in my action bar

I'm using "@style/Theme.AppCompat.Light"

Can anyone help me ?

Answer 1

Please Try to use android:showAsAction="ifRoom|withText" instead of app:showAsAction="ifRoom|withText"

Answer 2

In my case I had to add a few lines to onCreateOptionsMenu.

Android Studio didn't let me use android:showAsAction="ifRoom" while using appCompat.

app:showAsAction="ifRoom" wasn't working and I removed it without problems.

    @Override
    public boolean onCreateOptionsMenu(Menu menu) {
        MenuInflater  inflater = getMenuInflater();
        inflater.inflate(R.menu.menu, menu);
        for (int i = 0; i < menu.size(); i++) {
            menu.getItem(i).setShowAsAction(MenuItem.SHOW_AS_ACTION_IF_ROOM);
        }
        return super.onCreateOptionsMenu(menu);
    }

Answer 3

In case someone else gets into the same problem - I could not get the button to show up until I overrode the onCreateOptionsMenu function and Inflated the menu (I am using com.android.support:appcompat-v7:24.2.1 version)

Here is the code snippet:

 @Override
    public boolean onCreateOptionsMenu (Menu menu){

        getMenuInflater().inflate(R.menu.toolbar_menu, menu);
        return super.onCreateOptionsMenu(menu);
    }