NavigationView and ActionBarDrawerToggle

Question

With the new NavigationView is it still recommended to use ActionBarDrawerToggle or is this not \"Material Design\"? For instance previously we we

Answer 1

With the new NavigationView is it still recommended to use ActionBarDrawerToggle

No, it's not required.

If you look at the "official" demo code for the new Design Library, ActionBarDrawerToggle is no longer used, since the new NavigationView and AppCompatActivity don't really need it.

With the new v22 support library, you can strip out all of your ActionBarDrawerToggle code and just use the following to handle the interaction between NavigationDrawer and the ActionBar/ToolBar hamburger icon:

@Override
protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    ...
    final ActionBar actionBar = getSupportActionBar();
    actionBar.setHomeAsUpIndicator(R.drawable.ic_menu);
    actionBar.setDisplayHomeAsUpEnabled(true);
    ...
}

@Override
public boolean onOptionsItemSelected(MenuItem item) {
    switch (item.getItemId()) {
        case android.R.id.home:
            mDrawerLayout.openDrawer(GravityCompat.START);
            return true;
        ....
    }
    return super.onOptionsItemSelected(item);
}

You will need to provide your own "hamburger" drawable (R.drawable.ic_menu in my example). Besides that, the above code is all that's needed to handle opening of the drawer. The android.R.id.home case in onOptionsItemSelected() represents your hamburger drawer button. It points to a built-in resource id (not something you add to you menu xml), and it's handled automatically.

Besides that, you have to implement closing of the drawer by simply adding closeDrawers() to your click listener, like this:

navigationView.setNavigationItemSelectedListener(
    new NavigationView.OnNavigationItemSelectedListener() {
        @Override
        public boolean onNavigationItemSelected(MenuItem menuItem) {
            // Handle menu item clicks here.
            drawerLayout.closeDrawers();
            return true;
        }
    });

closeDrawers() is a method of DrawerLayout, and takes care of everything. That's it. That's all the code you really need to properly handle navigation drawers now. No more messy code for flipping hamburgers and such!

Of course, if you really want to, you can still use NavigationView with ActionBarDrawerToggle the old way. But you certainly don't have to.

If you want drawer callbacks

Even though ActionBarDrawerToggle is not required to open/close the drawer, it may still be useful for handling additional callbacks (especially if you're using ActionBar already). Otherwise, you can implement your own by using DrawerLayout.DrawerListener or by using DrawerLayout.SimpleDrawerListener(), to handle other open/close related events.