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Spinner Control In Android

In this article, we will discuss about spinner control in android.

What Is A Spinner Control?

Spinner control is a combo box control used to display list of options.

Bind Dropdown Using Adapter

As spinner is AdapterView so we will bind it using adapter. First, add a spinner control in layout file.

Picture showing the spinner control inside the linear layout

Click to Enlarge

The bind it using ArrayAdapter. Add the following code in onCreate method

String fruitlist[] = {
  "apple",
  "banana",
  "orange",
  "cherry"
};
Spinner spinner = (Spinner) findViewById(R.id.spinner);
ArrayAdapter < String > adapter = new ArrayAdapter < String > (this, R.layout.support_simple_spinner_dropdown_item, fruitlist);
spinner.setAdapter(adapter);

Here is the output

Picture showing the output of Spinner control in android

Click to Enlarge

We can also bind the spinner from the resources using createFromResource method.

Spinner spinner = (Spinner) findViewById(R.id.spinner);
ArrayAdapter < CharSequence > adapter = ArrayAdapter.createFromResource(this, R.array.sample_array, android.R.layout.simple_spinner_item);
spinner.setAdapter(adapter);

Use custom view instead of simple_spinner_item

In the previous example, we have used simple_spinner_item. But we can also use customer view.

For that create an XML file

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<TextView 
        android:id="@+id/textView2"        
        android:layout_tooltip="Picture showing " width="match_parent"        
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
	      xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" />

In the activity, use the following code

String fruitlist[] = {
  "apple",
  "banana",
  "orange",
  "cherry"
};
Spinner spinner = (Spinner) findViewById(R.id.spinner);
ArrayAdapter < CharSequence > adapter = ArrayAdapter.createFromResource(this, R.array.sample_array, R.layout.mylist);
spinner.setAdapter(adapter);

Onselected Event In Spinner

In order to fire the onselected event, we will follow these steps.

Create a new class and implement AdapterView.OnItemSelectedListener
Implement onItemSelected and onNothingSelected method

So the code will be

package com.example.demo_application;
import android.view.View;
import android.widget.AdapterView;
import android.widget.Toast;
import androidx.appcompat.widget.AppCompatSpinner;

public class myOnItemSelectedListener implements AdapterView.OnItemSelectedListener {

  @Override
  public void onItemSelected(AdapterView < ? > adapterView, View view, int i, long l) {
    AppCompatSpinner spinner = (AppCompatSpinner) view.getParent();
    Toast.makeText(spinner.getContext(), spinner.getSelectedItem().toString(), Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show();
  }

  @Override
  public void onNothingSelected(AdapterView < ? > adapterView) {}
}

In the code behind of activity file, use the following code

Spinner spinner = (Spinner) findViewById(R.id.spinner);
ArrayAdapter < CharSequence > adapter = ArrayAdapter.createFromResource(this, R.array.sample_array, android.R.layout.simple_spinner_item);
spinner.setAdapter(adapter);
spinner.setOnItemSelectedListener(new myOnItemSelectedListener());

When you run the program, you can see the selected text in toast

Picture showing the output of OnSelected event in spinner

Click to Enlarge

Posted By -	Karan Gupta

Posted On -	Saturday, November 2, 2019

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