Replacing ActionBar refresh button with Indeterminate Progress Bar in AsyncTask

Question

my question may seem similar to his, Replacing an ActionBar menu item icon with an indeterminate ProgressBar but the issue is different.

I am already able to replace refresh button from action bar with the progress bar but when I try it from onPreExecute method of AsyncTask class, I always get NullPointerException error.

Here is my code,

@Override
    public boolean onCreateOptionsMenu(Menu menu) {
        getMenuInflater().inflate(R.menu.desc_xml, menu);


        refreshMenuItem = menu.findItem(R.id.action_refresh);

        return true;
    }

@Override

public boolean onOptionsItemSelected(MenuItem item) {

    switch (item.getItemId()) {


    case R.id.action_refresh:
        new GetDesc().execute();
        return true;


    default:
        return super.onOptionsItemSelected(item);
    }
}

and this is my preExecute method in AsyncTask,

@Override
        protected void onPreExecute() {
            super.onPreExecute();
            refreshMenuItem.setActionView(R.layout.actionbar_indeterminate_progress);

        }

the above code always give error, and after searching on StackOverflow I came to know that I have to provide right context to the class when setting a layout from AsyncTask,

so I tried this in onPreExecute,

myclass.this.refreshMenuItem.setActionView(R.layout.actionbar_indeterminate_progress);

but that give the same error. So i tried this,

    refreshMenuItem.setActionView(com.abc.myproject.R.layout.actionbar_indeterminate_progress);

but I am still getting the same error.

Why am I still getting the same error even though i am providing the context ?

Here is the logcat output,

): FATAL EXCEPTION: main
): java.lang.RuntimeException: Unable to start activity ComponentInfo{com.myproject.abc java.lang.NullPointerException
):  at android.app.ActivityThread.performLaunchActivity(ActivityThread.java:2180)
):  at android.app.ActivityThread.handleLaunchActivity(ActivityThread.java:2230)
):  at android.app.ActivityThread.access$600(ActivityThread.java:141)
):  at android.app.ActivityThread$H.handleMessage(ActivityThread.java:1234)
):  at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:99)
):  at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:137)
):  at android.app.ActivityThread.main(ActivityThread.java:5041)
):  at java.lang.reflect.Method.invokeNative(Native Method)
):  at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:511)
):  at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit$MethodAndArgsCaller.run(ZygoteInit.java:793)
):  at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit.main(ZygoteInit.java:560)
):  at dalvik.system.NativeStart.main(Native Method)
): Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException
):  at $GetDesc.onPreExecute(NewsDetails.java:105)
):  at android.os.AsyncTask.executeOnExecutor(AsyncTask.java:586)
):  at android.os.AsyncTask.execute(AsyncTask.java:534)
):  at .onCreate(NewsDetails.java:40)
):  at android.app.Activity.performCreate(Activity.java:5104)
):  at android.app.Instrumentation.callActivityOnCreate(Instrumentation.java:1080)
):  at android.app.ActivityThread.performLaunchActivity(ActivityThread.java:2144)
):  ... 11 more