Utilizing Action Bar

Mobile Application Development
UNIT II
Utilizing Action bar

 ActionBar is the element present at the top of
the activity screen.
 It is a salient feature of a mobile application that has a
consistent presence over all its activities.
 It provides a visual structure to the app and contains
some of the frequently used elements for the users.
 Android ActionBar was launched by Google in
2013 with the release of Android 3.0(API 11).
 Before that, the name of this top visual element
was AppBar.
 AppBar contains only the name of the application or
current activity.
 It was not very much useful for the users and
developers have negligible option to customize it.
 Every android app contains an ActionBar by default.
 This pre-included ActionBar display title for the current
activity that is managed by
the AncdroidManifest.xml file.
 The string value of the application’s title is provided
by @string/app_name resource present under
the application nodes.
Components of ActionBar are:
 App Icon: Display the branding logo/icon of the

application.
 View Controls: Section that displays the name of the
application or current activity. Developers can also
include spinner or tabbed navigation for switching
between views.
 Action Button: Contains some important
actions/elements of the app that may be required to the
users frequently.
 Action Overflow: Include other actions that will be
displayed as a menu.
Designing a Custom ActionBar
 The following example demonstrates the steps involved

in creating a custom ActionBar for the MainActivity of
an application.
Step 1: Default ActionBar

 pre-included ActionBar display title for the current
activity that is managed by
the AncdroidManifest.xml file.
 The string value of the application’s title is provided
by @string/app_name resource present under
the application nodes.
<application
…..
…..
android:label=”@string/app_name”
…..
</application>
Step 2: Creating a new directory and design items of

ActionBar
 To code the elements of ActionBar, create a new
directory in the resource folder of the application
project files.
 Right-click on the res folder and selects New ->
Directory. Give the name “menu” to the new
directory.
 Create a new Menu Resource File by right click on the
menu directory.
 As the ActionBar is being created for the main Activity,

type the name as “main” to the Menu Resource File.
 With this, a new file named “main.xml” must be

created under the menu directory.
 In this file, one can declare the items which will be

displayed as the action buttons of the ActionBar.
 Every menu items, the following attributes are needed to
be configured:
 android:title: Its value contains the title of the menu
item that will be displayed when a user clicks and
holds that item in the app.
 android:id: A unique ID for the menu item that will
be used to access it anywhere in the whole application
files.
 android:orderInCategory: The value of this
attribute specify the item’s position in the ActionBar.
There are two ways to define the position of different
menu items. The first one is to provide the same value
of this attribute for all items and the position will be
defined in the same order as they are declared in the
code. The second way is to provide a different
numeric value for all items and then the items will
position themselves according to ascending order of
this attribute’s value.
 app:showAsAction: This attribute defines how the
item is going to be present in the action bar.
 There are four possible flags to choose from:
o always: To display the item in the ActionBar all
the time.
o ifRoom: To keep the item if space is available.
o never: With this flag, the item will be not be
displayed as an icon in ActionBar, but will be
present in the overflow menu.
o withText: To represent an item as both icon and
the title, one can append this flag with the always
or ifRoom flag(always|withText or ifRoom|
withText).
 android:icon: The icon of an item is referenced in
the drawable directories through this attribute.
 In order to provide an icon to an item, right-click
on the res folder, select new, and then Image
Asset.
 A dialog box will appear, choose the Icon
Type as Action Bar and Tab Icons.
 Choose assets type as “Clip Art” and select an
image from the clip art collection.
 Provide a desired name to the icon.
 Click on Next, then Finish.
 This icon will now get loaded in the drawable
directory of the res folder.
The name provided by the developers to these icons
will now be used to reference the item’s icon
resource.
Step 3: Working with the Activity File
 The items of an ActionBar is designed with a purpose to
perform some operations.
 Those operations/actions of the items are declared in
that Activity file for which the ActionBar has been
designed.
 In this example, the target activity is
the MainActivity file. Further, the custom title, subtitle,
and application logo are also defined in this file.
Advantages of ActionBar
 Provides a customized area to design the identity of an
app
 Specify the location of the user in the app by displaying
the title of the current Activity.
 Provides access to important and frequently used actions
 Support tabs and a drop-down list for view switching
and navigation.
Disadvantages of ActionBar
 All features of the ActionaBar are not introduced at once
but were introduced with the release of different API
levels such as API 15, 17, and 19.
 The ActionBar behaves differently when it runs on
different API levels.
 The features that were introduced with a particular API
does not provide backward compatibility.

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Mobile Application Development

Utilizing Action bar

Components of ActionBar are:

 App Icon: Display the branding logo/icon of the

Designing a Custom ActionBar

 The following example demonstrates the steps involved

Step 1: Default ActionBar

Step 2: Creating a new directory and design items of

 As the ActionBar is being created for the main Activity,

 With this, a new file named “main.xml” must be

 In this file, one can declare the items which will be

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