Null Pointer exception when using SearchView with AppCompat

Question

Today I have spent the time to migrate to the AppCompat library. I have setup everything successfully except my SearchView.

Before, it functioned properly, but now I

Answer 1

Maybe it's an obfuscation issue...

Try adding this to your proguard file:

-keep class android.support.v7.widget.SearchView { *; }

Answer 2

I had to do 3 things for this to work:

1. I went to my proguard-android.txt file found on my machine at Android/sdk/tools/proguard and I pasted the following at the bottom of the file:

-keep class android.support.v7.widget.SearchView { *; }

(then I saved the file)

2. In my action_menu.xml file in my project found at res/menu I originally had this android:actionViewClass="android.support.v7.widget.SearchView"

but I changed it to this

app:actionViewClass="android.support.v7.widget.SearchView" (the only difference being the word android and app)

So it currently looks like this:

<item android:id="@+id/action_search"
        android:icon="@drawable/ic_action_search"
        android:title="@string/action_search"
        app:showAsAction="collapseActionView|ifRoom"
        android:orderInCategory="1"
        app:actionViewClass="android.support.v7.widget.SearchView" />

3. Then I cleaned my project.

I ran it and it finally worked! No more null pointer exception! :)