Material Menus – Material Component For Android

A menu displays a list of choices on a temporary surface. They appear when users interact with a button, action, or other control.

Before getting into details. Check out my other post on material design,

Progress Indicators – Material Components For Android

Sliders – Material Component For Android

Material Menus – Material Component For Android

To work with material design, First, we need to add material design dependency.

implementation 'com.google.android.material:material:1.3.0'

Types of menus

  1. Dropdown menus
  2. Exposed dropdown menus
Types of menus

Dropdown Menus

Dropdown menus display a list of options, triggered by an icon, button, or action. Their placement varies based on the element that opens them.

Based on the usage and design, dropdown menus are used in four different ways.

  1. Overflow menus
  2. Context menus
  3. Popup menus
  4. List popup window menus

Overflow menus

The menu appears after tapping these 3 dots located in the action bar.

Overflow Menus

To create the overflow menu, First, create a menu XML file.

option_menu.xml:

<menu xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
        <item android:id="@+id/option_1"
            android:title="Home" />
        <item android:id="@+id/option_2"
            android:title="Settings" />
        <item android:id="@+id/option_3"
            android:title="Logout" />
    </menu>

Then, inflate the menu XML layout on onCreateOptionsMenu.

in your MainActivity.kt:

override fun onCreateOptionsMenu(menu: Menu?): Boolean {
            val inflater: MenuInflater = menuInflater
            inflater.inflate(R.menu.option_menu, menu)
            return true
        }

Context menus

The context menu that appears when a TextView is long pressed.

Context menus

First, create Textview in your activity_main.xml layout,

<TextView
            android:id="@+id/textview"
            android:layout_width="match_parent"
            android:layout_height="wrap_content"
            app:layout_constraintTop_toTopOf="parent"
            app:layout_constraintStart_toStartOf="parent"
            android:text="@string/lorem_ipsum"
            android:padding="8dp"/>

In your code, inflate the context menu layout in onCreateContextMenu.

override fun onCreateContextMenu(menu: ContextMenu?, v: View?, menuInfo: ContextMenu.ContextMenuInfo?) {
    super.onCreateContextMenu(menu, v, menuInfo)
    val inflater: MenuInflater = menuInflater
    inflater.inflate(R.menu.option_menu, menu)
}

Also, you can override the onContextItemSelected to handle the context menu item click.

override fun onContextItemSelected(item: MenuItem): Boolean {
            return when (item.itemId) {
                R.id.home -> {
                    // Respond to context menu home click.
                    Toast.makeText(this, "Home", Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show()
                    true
                }
                R.id.settings -> {
                    // Respond to context menu settings click.
                    true
                }
                R.id.logout -> {
                    // Respond to context menu logout click.
                    true
                }
                else -> super.onContextItemSelected(item)
            }
        }

Popup menus

The popup menu shows when a button is clicked.

Popup menus

Create a button in activity_main.xml,

<Button
            android:id="@+id/showMenu"
            android:layout_width="wrap_content"
            android:layout_height="wrap_content"
            android:text="Show Popup Menu"
            android:visibility="visible"
            app:layout_constraintTop_toTopOf="parent"
            app:layout_constraintStart_toStartOf="parent"
            app:layout_constraintEnd_toEndOf="parent"/>

With the click of a button, we need to create PopupMenu() and inflate the menu layout into the popup menu.

activityMainBinding.showMenu.setOnClickListener {
                val popup = PopupMenu(this, it)
                popup.menuInflater.inflate(R.menu.option_menu, popup.menu)
                popup.setOnMenuItemClickListener { menuItem: MenuItem ->
                    // Respond to menu item click.
                    return@setOnMenuItemClickListener true
                }
                popup.setOnDismissListener {
                    // Respond to popup being dismissed.
                }
                // Show the popup menu.
                popup.show()
            }

Also, you can add a click listener for the popup menu by setting setOnMenuItemClickListener into the popup menu.

Adding icons on popup menus

Currently, there is no public API to add icons on popup menus. The following workaround is for API 21+, which uses library-only APIs, and is not guaranteed to work in future versions.

create a menu layout with icons,

<menu xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
        <item android:id="@+id/home"
            android:icon="@drawable/ic_baseline_home_24"
            android:title="Home" />
        <item android:id="@+id/settings"
            android:icon="@drawable/ic_baseline_settings_24"
            android:title="Settings" />
        <item android:id="@+id/logout"
            android:icon="@drawable/ic_baseline_exit_to_app_24"
            android:title="Logout" />
    </menu>

In code:

activityMainBinding.showMenu.setOnClickListener {
                val popup = PopupMenu(this, it)
                popup.menuInflater.inflate(R.menu.option_menu, popup.menu)
                if (popup.menu is MenuBuilder) {
                    val menuBuilder = popup.menu as MenuBuilder
                    menuBuilder.setOptionalIconsVisible(true)
                    for (item in menuBuilder.visibleItems) {
                        val iconMarginPx =
                                TypedValue.applyDimension(
                                        TypedValue.COMPLEX_UNIT_DIP, ICON_MARGIN.toFloat(), resources.displayMetrics)
                                        .toInt()
                        if (item.icon != null) {
                            if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT > Build.VERSION_CODES.LOLLIPOP) {
                                item.icon = InsetDrawable(item.icon, iconMarginPx, 0, iconMarginPx,0)
                            } else {
                                item.icon =
                                        object : InsetDrawable(item.icon, iconMarginPx, 0, iconMarginPx, 0) {
                                            override fun getIntrinsicWidth(): Int {
                                                return intrinsicHeight + iconMarginPx + iconMarginPx
                                            }
                                        }
                            }
                        }
                    }
                }
                popup.show()
            }

List popup window menus

We can show the list of items in the popup menu using ListPopupWindow().

List Popup window menu

In code, First, create a listPopupWindow list of menu items.

val listPopupWindow = ListPopupWindow(this, null, R.attr.listPopupWindowStyle)
            // Set button as the list popup's anchor
            listPopupWindow.anchorView = activityMainBinding.showMenu
            // Set list popup's content
            val items = listOf("List Item 1", "List Item 2", "List Item 3")
            val adapter = ArrayAdapter(this, R.layout.list_item, items)
            listPopupWindow.setAdapter(adapter)
            // Set list popup's item click listener
            listPopupWindow.setOnItemClickListener { parent: AdapterView<*>?, view: View?, position: Int, id: Long ->
                // Respond to list popup window item click.
                // Dismiss popup.
                listPopupWindow.dismiss()
            }

Then, show the list popup menu by clicking the button.

activityMainBinding.showMenu.setOnClickListener {
                listPopupWindow.show()
            }

Exposed dropdown menus

Exposed dropdown menus display the currently selected menu item above the list of options. the exposed dropdown menus behavior same as a spinner. So, this will be the best alternative for spinners.

The exposed dropdown menu is implemented through the TextInputLayout.

Exposed dropdown menus

In the layout:

<com.google.android.material.textfield.TextInputLayout
            android:id="@+id/textInputLayout"
            style="@style/Widget.MaterialComponents.TextInputLayout.FilledBox.ExposedDropdownMenu"
            android:layout_width="match_parent"
            android:layout_height="wrap_content"
            app:layout_constraintTop_toTopOf="parent"
            app:layout_constraintStart_toStartOf="parent"
            android:hint="Select city">
            <AutoCompleteTextView
                android:id="@+id/menuAutocomplete"
                android:layout_width="match_parent"
                android:layout_height="wrap_content"
                />
        </com.google.android.material.textfield.TextInputLayout>

in code, set the arrayAdapter into autoCompleteTextView.

val items = listOf("Chennai", "Delhi", "Mumbai", "Pune")
            val adapter = ArrayAdapter(this, R.layout.list_item, items)
            activityMainBinding.menuAutocomplete.setAdapter(adapter)

In the item layout (list_item.xml):

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
    <TextView xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
        android:layout_width="match_parent"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools"
        android:ellipsize="end"
        android:maxLines="1"
        android:padding="16dp"
        tools:text="List "
        android:textAppearance="?attr/textAppearanceSubtitle1" />

To have an outlined variation of the exposed dropdown menu, set the style to @style/Widget.MaterialComponents.TextInputLayout.OutlinedBox.ExposedDropdownMenu:

Outlined Exposed Dropdown menu
  • Non-editable variation
  • Disable the user input in the AutoCompleteTextView to have a non editable variation of the menu by setting android:inputType=”none” on the AutoCompleteTextView.
<AutoCompleteTextView
                android:id="@+id/menuAutocomplete"
                android:layout_width="match_parent"
                android:layout_height="wrap_content"
                android:inputType="none"
                />
  • Setting a default value
  • In order to have a pre-selected value displayed, you can call setText(CharSequence text, boolean filter) on the AutoCompleteTextView with the filter set to false.

That’s it. Thank you for reading.


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