How to use my own custom EditText layout as a searchView

Question

I have just starting using an ActionBar, everything is well apart from the search box. I am now wanting to use a SearchView but have found it to be hard to customize, is there a way to use my existing EditText based layout in place of the expandable SearchView?

The top one is the new SearchView and the bottom is my old one which I would like to use, I am not worried about any extras like autocomplete.

I have looked on google for some time but cannot find any solution, my XML for the menu looks like so :

<menu xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">

    <item android:id="@+id/btnSearch"
          android:title="Search"
          android:icon="@drawable/ic_action_search"
          android:showAsAction="always|collapseActionView"
          android:actionViewClass="android.widget.SearchView"
          android:queryHint="blah blah"/>

...

</menu>

I have found that I can get the bottom line to look similar to my old search box by using some ugly looking reflection code, however it still does not look right, the padding etc is all wrong. I don't want any reflection, I just want to use my old layout.

Answer 1

I found something that could solve your problem:

http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/software-engineer/pro-tip-customize-the-android-search-view-widget/#.