How can I refresh the ActionBar when onPrepareOptionsMenu switched menu entries?

Question

Within my apps I often enable/disable menu entries and do make them visible from onPrepareOptionsMenu.

Today I started to add the android:showAsAction menu attribute

Answer 1

Kudos to @Klaasvaak for showing us the way here. I use the following which works on both pre- and post- API Level 11:

private void invalidOptionsMenuHelper() {
    if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= 11) {
        invalidateOptionsMenu();

    } else if (mOptionsMenu != null) {
        mOptionsMenu.clear();
        onCreateOptionsMenu(mOptionsMenu);
    }
}

Of course, you must save a reference to the menu (mOptionsMenu in this case) which I accomplish via:

@Override
public boolean onCreateOptionsMenu(Menu menu) {
    mOptionsMenu = menu;

    //... create and manage the menu normally
}