Android SearchView.OnQueryTextListener OnQueryTextSubmit not fired on empty query string

Question

I am using Android 4.1.2. I have a SearchView widget on an ActionBar. Documentation on SearchView.OnQueryTextListener

Answer 1

This is a complete example written in Kotlin:

import android.content.Context
import android.text.TextUtils
import android.util.AttributeSet
import android.view.inputmethod.EditorInfo
import android.widget.TextView
import androidx.appcompat.widget.SearchView

/**
 * Custom [SearchView] which can listen to empty submit events
 *
 * If the internal implementation would change, this will not crash at runtime. It will simply
 * ignore the empty submit listener and will continue to work as this is the base [SearchView]
 */
class EmptySubmitSearchView @JvmOverloads constructor(
    context: Context,
    attrs: AttributeSet? = null,
    defStyleAttr: Int = 0
) : SearchView(context, attrs, defStyleAttr) {

    private lateinit var searchAutoComplete: SearchAutoComplete

    private lateinit var internalEditorListener: TextView.OnEditorActionListener

    private var emptySubmitListener: OnEmptySubmitListener? = null

    init {
        try {
            val defaultListenerField = SearchView::class.java
                .getDeclaredField("mOnEditorActionListener")
            defaultListenerField.isAccessible = true
            internalEditorListener = defaultListenerField.get(this) as TextView.OnEditorActionListener

            val searchAutoCompleteField = SearchView::class.java
                .getDeclaredField("mSearchSrcTextView")
            searchAutoCompleteField.isAccessible = true
            searchAutoComplete = searchAutoCompleteField.get(this) as SearchAutoComplete

            searchAutoComplete.setOnEditorActionListener { v, actionId, event ->
                if (actionId == EditorInfo.IME_ACTION_DONE && TextUtils.isEmpty(searchAutoComplete.text)) {
                    emptySubmitListener?.onEmptyTextSubmit()
                } else {
                    internalEditorListener.onEditorAction(v, actionId, event)
                }
                true
            }
        } catch (ignored: Exception) {
            //Some internal field has changed. Check there is a field called
            //mSearchSrcTextView and mOnEditorActionListener and if not update them accordingly
        }
    }

    /**
     * Set custom empty listener or null to remove it
     */
    fun setOnEmptySubmitListener(listener: OnEmptySubmitListener?) {
        emptySubmitListener = listener
    }

    interface OnEmptySubmitListener {
        fun onEmptyTextSubmit()
    }
}

You can set a custom listener with setOnEmptySubmitListener which will enable you to distinguish between events.

You can customize the actionId to respond to, in this case I had in my XML the EmptySubmitSearchView with this android:imeOptions="actionDone|flagNoExtractUi"