Cannot get android.support.v7.widget.SearchView to accept text

Question

After hours of trying to get a support SearchView in my support Toolbar to work correctly (it shows up, shows the hint text but refuses to accept text), I have to turn to you.

I have Googled for hours, read A LOT of answers here and in other sites, checked out a lot of documentation and a specific blog post dealing with the subject but I just can't isolate the issue.

As I have said, I am using the support versions of SearchView and Toolbar and also MenuItemCompat. Also, ActionBarActivity. I made sure that I followed all the steps religiously (this blog post had a lot to say on the subject, even mistakes in the official documentation).

I have set the AndroidManifest.xml file correctly, I have a searchable.xml which, as far as I understand, is referenced correctly (I mean, the hint text shows up normally in the SearchView field), I have a search result activity with an android.intent.action.SEARCH intent filter set in the manifest.

Still nothing. I'm honestly stumped here.

Here's the onCreateOptionsMenu() of the SearchView-hosting activity:

@Override
public boolean onCreateOptionsMenu(Menu menu) {
        getMenuInflater().inflate(R.menu.menu, menu);
        MenuItem search = menu.findItem(R.id.search);

        searchView = (SearchView) MenuItemCompat.getActionView(search);

        SearchManager searchManager = (SearchManager)getSystemService(Context.SEARCH_SERVICE);

        searchView.setSearchableInfo(searchManager
                .getSearchableInfo(getComponentName()));
        return true;
    }

And here is searchable.xml in res/xml:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<searchable xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:hint="@string/search_hint"
    android:label="@string/search_title" >

</searchable>

Finally, here is the menu.xml file in res/menu:

<item
        android:id="@+id/search"
        android:icon="@drawable/ic_search_white_18dp"
        android:title="@string/search_title"
        myappname:actionViewClass="android.support.v7.widget.SearchView"
        myappname:showAsAction="ifRoom|collapseActionView"/>

(obviously myappname replaces my real app name here).

Weirdly, voice search works perfectly normal after I add

android:voiceSearchMode="showVoiceSearchButton|launchRecognizer"

in searchable.xml. It even sends the recognised phrase in the intent to the search results activity. The only problem is that I simply can't input text in the text field - there's not even a cursor blinking there. Attempts to do something like searchView.requestFocus() have no result.

score 2 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:30

After wasting 8 hours on this, I came up with a solution. I'm not sure about how much of a hack it is but it works.

I noticed that the EditText in the SearchView was behaving erratically as far as focusing was concerned: it had no cursor and, weirdly enough, when I pulled the notification drawer down, it seemed to change focus. I decided to go with the theory that the problem was the focus of the EditText inside the SearchView, so I went looking for the android.R.id of the EditText.

After searching, I came upon this answer. So I got a reference to the EditText within the SearchView thusly:

EditText searchField = (EditText) 
searchView.findViewById(android.support.v7.appcompat.R.id.search_src_text);

I then requested focus for the EditText:

searchField.requestFocus();

... and suddenly the SearchView could accept text, with all the relevant callbacks working!

I only had one problem left: when onPause() was called, my solution stopped working since the EditText lost focus. So I just added:

invalidateOptionsMenu();

...in onResume() and now it works perfectly.

I must say, though: it was a really weird experience since I followed the steps religiously (not in the official Android developer guide, which has a number of mistakes) and still couldn't get the SearchView EditText to focus. I have a suspicion that the nav drawer has the focus upon the Activity creation and maybe that was the source of the problem but I'm not sure yet.

Cannot get android.support.v7.widget.SearchView to accept text

1 Answers1