Refresh menu item animation in ActionBarSherlock

Question

public boolean onOptionsItemSelected(MenuItem item) {
    switch (item.getItemId()) {

    case android.R.id.home:
        return true;

    case R.id.searchIcon:
           


        

Answer 1

The issue is that you're not handling all menu inflation in onCreateOptionsMenu(). The basic logic for an ActionBar refresh animation I've seen used in apps with open source , for example Andlytics (and also used myself in projects), is to implement a boolean flag in onCreateOptionsMenu() to decide whether to show the refresh animation.

You can implement it like this: When your refresh() method is called, it sets the boolean isRefreshing flag to true and calls inValidateOptionsMenu() which 'behind the scene' calls onCreateOptionsMenu() to start the animation:

Inflate the menu in onCreateOptionsMenu(...):

@Override
public void onCreateOptionsMenu(Menu menu, MenuInflater inflater) {
    menu.clear();
    super.onCreateOptionsMenu(menu, inflater);
    //inflate a menu which shows the non-animated refresh icon
    inflater.inflate(R.menu.my_ab_menu, menu);

    if (isRefreshing) {
        //if we're refreshing, show the animation
        MenuItem item = menu.findItem(R.id.refreshMenuItem);
        item.setActionView(R.layout.action_bar_indeterminate_progress);
        ImageView iv = (ImageView) item.getActionView().findViewById(R.id.loadingImageView);
        ((AnimationDrawable) iv.getDrawable()).start();
    }
}

Start animation like so:

 public void refresh(){
        isRefreshing = true;
        inValidateOptionsMenu();
    }

If you want the user to start the animation when he taps the refresh icon, do like this in onOptionsItemSelected():

case R.id.refreshMenuItem:
    isRefreshing = true;
    item.setActionView(R.layout.action_bar_indeterminate_progress);
    ImageView iv = (ImageView) item.getActionView().findViewById(R.id.loadingImageView);
    ((AnimationDrawable) iv.getDrawable()).start();
    //...

To stop the animation call:

isRefreshing = false;
invalidateOptionsMenu();

This code is from a Fragment so you may have to tweak if for an Activity, but I think it communicates the basic idea.