In this document
Key classes
Spinners provide a quick way to select one value from a set. In the default state, a spinner shows its currently selected value. Touching the spinner displays a dropdown menu with all other available values, from which the user can select a new one.
You can add a spinner to your layout with the Spinner
object. You
should usually do so in your XML layout with a <Spinner>
element. For example:
<Spinner android:id="@+id/planets_spinner" android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="wrap_content" />
To populate the spinner with a list of choices, you then need to specify a SpinnerAdapter
in your Activity
or Fragment
source code.
Populate the Spinner with User Choices
The choices you provide for the spinner can come from any source, but must be provided through
an SpinnerAdapter
, such as an ArrayAdapter
if the
choices are available in an array or a CursorAdapter
if the choices are
available from a database query.
For instance, if the available choices for your spinner are pre-determined, you can provide them with a string array defined in a string resource file:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <resources> <string-array name="planets_array"> <item>Mercury</item> <item>Venus</item> <item>Earth</item> <item>Mars</item> <item>Jupiter</item> <item>Saturn</item> <item>Uranus</item> <item>Neptune</item> </string-array> </resources>
With an array such as this one, you can use the following code in your Activity
or Fragment
to supply the spinner with the array using
an instance of ArrayAdapter
:
Spinner spinner = (Spinner) findViewById(R.id.spinner); // Create an ArrayAdapter using the string array and a default spinner layout ArrayAdapter<CharSequence> adapter = ArrayAdapter.createFromResource(this, R.array.planets_array, android.R.layout.simple_spinner_item); // Specify the layout to use when the list of choices appears adapter.setDropDownViewResource(android.R.layout.simple_spinner_dropdown_item); // Apply the adapter to the spinner spinner.setAdapter(adapter);
The createFromResource()
method allows
you to create an ArrayAdapter
from the string array. The third argument for
this method is a layout resource that defines how the selected choice appears in the
spinner control. The simple_spinner_item
layout is provided by the
platform and is the default layout you should use unless you'd like to define your own layout
for the spinner's appearance.
You should then call setDropDownViewResource(int)
to specify
the layout the adapter should use to display the list of spinner choices (simple_spinner_dropdown_item
is another standard layout defined by the
platform).
Call setAdapter()
to apply the adapter to your
Spinner
.
Responding to User Selections
When the user selects an item from the drop-down, the Spinner
object
receives an on-item-selected event.
To define the selection event handler for a spinner, implement the AdapterView.OnItemSelectedListener
interface and the corresponding onItemSelected()
callback method.
For example, here's an implementation of the interface in an Activity
:
public class SpinnerActivity extends Activity implements OnItemSelectedListener { ... public void onItemSelected(AdapterView<?> parent, View view, int pos, long id) { // An item was selected. You can retrieve the selected item using // parent.getItemAtPosition(pos) } public void onNothingSelected(AdapterView<?> parent) { // Another interface callback } }
The AdapterView.OnItemSelectedListener
requires the onItemSelected()
and onNothingSelected()
callback methods.
Then you need to specify the interface implementation by calling setOnItemSelectedListener()
:
Spinner spinner = (Spinner) findViewById(R.id.spinner); spinner.setOnItemSelectedListener(this);
If you implement the AdapterView.OnItemSelectedListener
interface with your Activity
or Fragment
(such as in the example above), you can pass
this
as the interface instance.