Spinner View Android Beginner Dev Tutorial

This is again another very simple tutorial on using a Spinner View provided by Android SDK. A spinner is supposed to be a view that displays one child at a time (Whatever that means).


This example is very similar to the previous one on AutoCompleteTextView.

Jumping right into the code, here is the layout xml file:

<Spinner
android:id="@+id/Spinner01"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:drawSelectorOnTop = "true"></Spinner>


Nothing special. It just consists of one element.

Now in the main activity, I create an array of android books:

String[] androidBooks =
{
"Hello, Android - Ed Burnette",
"Professional Android 2 App Dev - Reto Meier",
"Unlocking Android - Frank Ableson",
"Android App Development - Blake Meike",
"Pro Android 2 - Dave MacLean",
"Beginning Android 2 - Mark Murphy",
"Android Programming Tutorials - Mark Murphy",
"Android Wireless App Development - Lauren Darcey",
"Pro Android Games - Vladimir Silva",
};

Then in the onCreate() method, I create an ArrayAdapter that I can pass to this Spinner as the data Source.

ArrayAdapter<String> adapter =
        new ArrayAdapter<String> (this,
        android.R.layout.simple_spinner_item,androidBooks);

Then, I get a handle to the Spinner, and set the ArrayAdapter to it

sp = (Spinner)findViewById(R.id.Spinner01);
sp.setAdapter(adapter);

Now, on selecting one of the items in the spinner, I want to be able to toast a message on the book that was selected. It is done as follows:

sp.setOnItemSelectedListener(new OnItemSelectedListener() {
    @Override
    public void onItemSelected(AdapterView<?> arg0, View arg1, int arg2, long arg3) {
        int item = sp.getSelectedItemPosition();
        Toast.makeText(getBaseContext(),
            "You have selected the book: " + androidBooks[item],
            Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();
    }


    @Override
    public void onNothingSelected(AdapterView<?> arg0) {
    }
});

That is it. Now execute and see it work. Here is how it would look:

The example code can be downloaded here.

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