How do I open the SearchView programmatically?

Question

There is this widget for the ActionBar which called 'SearchView'. When it's not in use, it looks like this:

And when it's in use, it looks like this:

I want (programmatically of course) to open the searchview (make it "in use").

I tried several functions such as:

SearchView searchView = (SearchView) menu.findItem(R.id.menu_search).getActionView();     searchView.setOnQueryTextListener(this);      searchView.performClick();     searchView.requestFocus(); 

But none of those worked...

The SearchView in the XML:

<item android:id="@+id/menu_search"       android:title="Search"       android:icon="@drawable/ic_action_search"       android:showAsAction="ifRoom|collapseActionView"       android:actionViewClass="android.widget.SearchView" /> 

Answer 1

Expand the SearchView with

searchView.setIconified(false); 

and collapse it with

searchView.setIconified(true); 

You need to change the value of android:showAsAction from ifRoom|collapseActionView to always. The SearchView's attribute android:iconifiedByDefault should be true, which is the default value, otherwise the user can not collapse the SearchView after it was expanded programmatically.

Answer 2

Try to call expandActionView() on MenuItem, not onActionViewExpanded() on ActionView.

It works for me.

MenuItem searchMenuItem = menu.findItem(R.id.menu_search); searchView = (SearchView) searchMenuItem.getActionView(); searchMenuItem.expandActionView();