Get the view from the action bar menu item

Question

I have a PopupWindow that I want to anchor to an action bar menu item but can't seem anyway to get at the View of the item that I want to click on. This is required for the PopupWindow showAsDropDown() method.

Does anyone know how to achieve this?

Answer 1

You can get the view using the menu item id, by getting it in onOptionsItemSelected ..

findViewById(R.id.menu_item);

Answer 2

findViewById doesn't have to be run on onOptionsItemSelected in order to get the view of the action item.

however, do note that sometimes action items get to be inside the overflow menu so you might get a null instead.

so, how can you do it?

here's a sample code:

public boolean onCreateOptionsMenu(final Menu menu) {
  getSupportMenuInflater().inflate(R.menu.main, menu);
  new Handler().post(new Runnable() {
    @Override
    public void run() {
      final View menuItemView = findViewById(R.id.menu_action_item);
      ...

this was tested when using actionBarSherlock library, on android 4.1.2 and android 2.3.5 .

another alternative is to use a more extensive way , used on the showcaseView library, here .

Answer 3

Every where call:

activity.findViewById(R.id.menu_item);

If your code inside fragment don't use:

getView().findViewById(R.id.menu_item); 

It will return null.