Android - Ques on order in which Fragment Options Menu called

Question

I was reading the help section on google's android page on OptionsMenus and ActionsBars: http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/actionbar.html And they included a note that stated that when using fragments, the activity's onOptionsItemSelected method would be called beforethe fragment's is called, their by making it necessary to include the default: return super.onOptionsItemSelected at the end of the onOptionsItemSelected method definition. They included the following method example but did not state if this was meant to be an example within an Activity definition or a Fragment definition. I was a little confused on this and wanted to ask for clearification. based on the use of "super" it would suggest it's inside the fragment getting passed up to the Activity, but this disagrees with their statement that the Activity gets called first. If it's meant to be an example in the Activity and "super" refers to the parent Application class, then I am not clear on how it gets referred back to the Fragment. Any notes of clearification would be appreciated.

@Override
public boolean onOptionsItemSelected(MenuItem item) {
    // Handle presses on the action bar items
    switch (item.getItemId()) {
        case R.id.action_search:
            openSearch();
            return true;
        case R.id.action_compose:
            composeMessage();
            return true;
        default:
            return super.onOptionsItemSelected(item);
    }
}

thanks for the info. in that case, what does "super" refer to here. — user3064141, Jan 03 '15 at 20:39

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 03 '15 at 20:52

Your MyActivity extends Activity and thus inherits its methods, one of which is onOptionsItemSelected() that you are overriding.

Calling super.whatever() says: I want to override this method whatever()from the superclass Activity, but still run the method as defined there. Basically, you are adding something to that method. It's what you typically do onCreate, for example.

In this case, returning false would mean that, if ID is different from the mentioned twos, we're done - menu managing can stop here. Obviously we are not, as we want the fragment to receive its call.

So: your activity overrides the superclass method to manage the first two menu items, then calls the superclass method to keep things running and say hey, there might be something that has not be managed here.

Android - Ques on order in which Fragment Options Menu called

1 Answers1