How can I get the current location of an ActionBar MenuItem?

Question

I want to show a little info label underneath a MenuItem in the app's ActionBar. To position this correctly I need to know the x-position of a MenuItem.

Google brought me no useful results so far.

Is it even possible?

Answer 1

I found another way to get a hook on an action bar button, which may be a bit simpler than the accepted solution. You can simply call findViewById, with the id of the menu item!

Now the hard part is when can you call this? In onCreate and onResume, it is too early. Well one way to do this is to use the ViewTreeObserver of the window:

    final ViewTreeObserver viewTreeObserver = getWindow().getDecorView().getViewTreeObserver();     viewTreeObserver.addOnGlobalLayoutListener(new OnGlobalLayoutListener() {         @Override         public void onGlobalLayout() {             View menuButton = findViewById(R.id.menu_refresh);             // This could be called when the button is not there yet, so we must test for null             if (menuButton != null) {                 // Found it! Do what you need with the button                 int[] location = new int[2];                 menuButton.getLocationInWindow(location);                 Log.d(TAG, "x=" + location[0] + " y=" + location[1]);                  // Now you can get rid of this listener                 viewTreeObserver.removeGlobalOnLayoutListener(this);             }         }     }); 

This goes in onCreate.

Note: this was tested on a project using ActionBarSherlock, so it is possible that it doesn't work with a 'real' action bar.