How to change the autocomplete text color for search view inside of ActionBarSherlock with dark background?

Question

I have my own theme for ActionBarSherlock based on Theme.Sherlock.Light.DarkActionBar, here are my styles:

<style name="Theme.MyTheme" parent="Theme.Sherlock.Light.DarkActionBar">
    <item name="actionBarStyle">@style/Widget.MyTheme.ActionBar</item>
</style>

<style name="Widget.MyTheme.ActionBar" parent="Widget.Sherlock.Light.ActionBar.Solid.Inverse">
    <item name="android:background">@drawable/action_bar</item>
    <item name="background">@drawable/action_bar</item>
</style>

Where @drawable/action_bar is an xml:

<layer-list xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" >
    <item>
        <shape android:shape="rectangle">
            <solid android:color="@color/color_action_bar_bottom_line" />
        </shape>
    </item>

    <item android:bottom="2dp">
        <shape android:shape="rectangle">
            <solid android:color="@color/color_action_bar_background" />
        </shape>
    </item>
</layer-list>

Everything looks great except one thing: the text in the SearchView (when I use the search mode in ActionBar) is "dark on dark", so I cannot see anything. I tried to set the text colors for SearchView manually:

AutoCompleteTextView searchTextView =
        (AutoCompleteTextView) searchView.findViewById(R.id.abs__search_src_text);
searchTextView.setTextColor(Color.WHITE);
searchTextView.setHintTextColor(Color.LTGRAY);
searchTextView.setHighlightColor(Color.WHITE);
searchTextView.setLinkTextColor(Color.WHITE);

This helped a lot but I cannot change the color of autocomplete text:

As you see, it's still black. How can I set the white text color for this kind of text?

Answer 1

Try this code

SearchView searchView = new SearchView(context);
LinearLayout linearLayout1 = (LinearLayout) searchView.getChildAt(0);
LinearLayout linearLayout2 = (LinearLayout) linearLayout1.getChildAt(2);
LinearLayout linearLayout3 = (LinearLayout) linearLayout2.getChildAt(1);
AutoCompleteTextView autoComplete = (AutoCompleteTextView) linearLayout3.getChildAt(0);
autoComplete.setTextColor(Color.WHITE);

or

SearchView searchView = new SearchView(context);
AutoCompleteTextView search_text = (AutoCompleteTextView) searchView.findViewById(searchView.getContext().getResources().getIdentifier("android:id/search_src_text", null, null));
search_text.setTextColor(Color.WHITE);

It's from my own answer here How to set SearchView TextSize?