Android actionbar spinner selected item, subtitle and dropdown list

Question

How can I make spinner in action bar to have different item as selected (shown in the action bar top) then the one in the drop down list? Example is google mail with spinner in

Answer 1

it might be a bit too late, but the tutorial with commented codes can be found on the Android developer website: http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/actionbar.html#Dropdown

the basics is that during the activity OnCreate you have to set it to be a list:

      getActionBar().setNavigationMode(ActionBar.NAVIGATION_MODE_LIST);

and then create a spinner adapter and a couple of callbacks just like you would do with a normal spinner.

hope it helps

Answer 2

To have a different view in the action bar spinner than in the spinner list, you can use a BaseAdapter or an ArrayAdapter and override some methods:

  @Override
  public View getView(int position, View convertView, ViewGroup parent) {
    // Return a view which appears in the action bar.

    return yourCustomView..;
  }

  @Override
  public View getDropDownView(int position, View convertView, ViewGroup parent) {
    // Return a view which appears in the spinner list.

    // Ignoring convertView to make things simpler, considering
    // we have different types of views. If the list is long, think twice!
    return super.getView(position, null, parent);
  }