android - Custom view for Menu Item

Question

I need to have dynamic Menu Item, a circle of user defined color, like this:

touching this menu item will open a color picker.

Now, I have sample ColorPickerIcon which extends View

public class ColorPickerIcon extends View {

private Paint mPaint;
private int mColor;

private final int mRadius = 20;

public ColorPickerIcon(Context context) {
    super(context);

    mColor = Color.BLACK;
    mPaint = createPaint();
}

public ColorPickerIcon(Context context, AttributeSet attrs) {
    super(context, attrs);

    mColor = Color.BLACK;
    mPaint = createPaint();
}

@Override
protected void onDraw(Canvas canvas) {
    super.onDraw(canvas);
    canvas.drawCircle(0, 0, mRadius, mPaint);
}

public void setPaintColor(int color) {
    mColor = color;
}

private Paint createPaint() {

    Paint temp = new Paint();
    temp.setAntiAlias(true);
    temp.setStyle(Paint.Style.STROKE);
    temp.setStrokeJoin(Paint.Join.ROUND);

    temp.setStrokeWidth(6f);
    temp.setColor(mColor);

    return temp;

}

}

and menu.xml

<item
    android:id="@+id/menu_pick_color"
    android:title="@string/pick_color"
    yourapp:showAsAction="always"
    yourapp:actionViewClass="com.example.widgets.ColorPickerIcon"/>

<item
    android:id="@+id/menu_clear"
    android:icon="@null"
    android:title="@string/clear"
    yourapp:showAsAction="always"/>

<item
    android:id="@+id/menu_save"
    android:icon="@null"
    android:title="@string/save"
    yourapp:showAsAction="always"/>

But it doesn't work this way, neither can I instantiate the class nor it's rendered. Is there a way to use custom class and custom dynamic view as Menu Item?

Answer 1

What you need to do is create a layout file with the view that you want for the item, the when you declare the item on the menu, assign the layout like this:

<item
    android:id="@+id/menu_pick_color"
    android:title="@string/pick_color"
    app:showAsAction="always"
    app:actionLayout="@layout/my_custom_item"/>

And that's it!

EDIT:

To access the custom item and modify it's color at runtime you can do this.

In your activity (or fragment) override the onPrepareOptionsMenu (Assuming you already inflated your menu with 'onCreateOptionsMenu')

@Override
public boolean onPrepareOptionsMenu(Menu menu) {

    //Get a reference to your item by id
    MenuItem item = menu.findItem(R.id.menu_pick_color);

    //Here, you get access to the view of your item, in this case, the layout of the item has a FrameLayout as root view but you can change it to whatever you use
    FrameLayout rootView = (FrameLayout)item.getActionView();

    //Then you access to your control by finding it in the rootView
    YourControlClass control = (YourControlClass) rootView.findViewById(R.id.control_id);

    //And from here you can do whatever you want with your control

    return true;
}