onCreateOptionsMenu() calling super

Question

I'm creating application with OptionsMenu. I found few examples with it, but everyone is using different place where to call super.onCreateOptionMenu() in onCreateOptionsMenu() method.

List of different ways:

@Override // without super
public boolean onCreateOptionsMenu(Menu menu) {
  MenuInflater inflater = getMenuInflater();
  inflater.inflate(R.menu.mymenu, menu);
  return true;
}

@Override
public boolean onCreateOptionsMenu(Menu menu) {
  super.onCreateOptionsMenu(menu);
  MenuInflater inflater = getMenuInflater();
  inflater.inflate(R.menu.mymenu, menu);
  return true;
}

@Override
public boolean onCreateOptionsMenu(Menu menu) {
  MenuInflater inflater = getMenuInflater();
  inflater.inflate(R.menu.mymenu, menu);
  return super.onCreateOptionsMenu(menu);
}

What should I use?

score 36 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 24 '12 at 18:33

It depends on what you want to do. First example will place your menu and only your menu. Second one, will add first super class menu. Last one will add your menu first. But, keep in mind that menus also have an order field, which will be taken into account at render time.

Let's say you are extending an activity that already has a menu, but you do not want that menu to appear but another one. In that case you would use first approach.

Another example: you are extending an activity that has a menu, and you want to add another menu. In that case you could use either second or last approach.

score 4 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 24 '12 at 18:53

The source for onCreateOptionsMenu() is as follows:

public boolean onCreateOptionsMenu(Menu menu) {
    if (mParent != null) {
        return mParent.onCreateOptionsMenu(menu);
    }
    return true;
}

Where mParent is the parent Activity of the current Activity. If your Activity extends android.app.Activity then can just return true at the end and not worry about calling the super, as the default implementation will attempt to show a menu based on the parent Activity, which you probably don't want.

onCreateOptionsMenu() calling super

2 Answers2

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