Spinner item gets automatically selected upon entering activity. How do I avoid this?

Question

I have a spinner in my Android app, and its onItemSelected() event automatically gets triggered upon entering the activity.

How do I avoid this?

Answer 1

Well, you can add a dummy selection to the initial adapter, and ignore position number in the setOnItemSelectedListener. It's not pretty but it works. See this code for setting up the items for an array adapter.

List<String> names = new ArrayList<String>();
names.add("");
names.addAll(realValues);

Then in your setOnItemSelectedListener you can do this:

    @Override
    public void onItemSelected(AdapterView<?> parent, View view, int position, long id)
    {
        if (position > 0)
        {
            String name = names.get(position - 1);
        }
        else
        {
            Log.d(TAG, "selected nothing or perhaps the dummy value");
        }
    }

Answer 2

To add on Jerry Abraham, You should clear selection before enabling setOnItemSelectedListener

  Spinner mSpinner=(Spinner)findViewById(R.id.mySpinner);
  int initialSelectedPosition=mSpinner.getSelectedItemPosition();
  mSpinner.setSelection(initialSelectedPosition, false); //clear selection
  mSpinner.setOnItemSelectedListener(this); //set listener after clearing section