Android Tutorial 23 : Working With Menu: Creating Option Menu

Option Menu:
Option Menu is a drop down menu containing   options, and appears when a users clicks on Menu button.
For Ex:
  

                                               

We can create an Option Menu with following :

1. Create a menu xml
2. Register the menu in Activity
3. Write code to Handle the Clicks on menu items

1: Create xml for menu

     Create a new folder named "Menu" in res folder
     inside this  Menu folder create .xml    file 

here I have created option.xml   xml for the option menu in  above  Image

           <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<menu xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" >
   
     <item android:id="@+id/ChangeColor"
          android:icon="@drawable/setting"
          android:title="Settings"
          />
    <item android:id="@+id/phoneInformation"
          android:icon="@drawable/phone"
          android:title="My Phone Information" />
   
    <item android:id="@+id/callInfo"
          android:icon="@drawable/callinfo"
          android:title="In and Out Call Info" />

   
    <item android:id="@+id/email"
          android:icon="@drawable/mail"
          android:title="Mail to Developer" />
   
 </menu>

android:id

A resource ID that's unique to the item, which allows the application can recognize the item when the user selects it.

android:icon

An image  to use as the item's icon.

android:title

A tittle to show.

2: Register In Activity

Override onCreateOptionMenu   method and inflate the .xml (here options.xml) inside method 

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

3: Handle Click Events

When the user selects an item from the options menu (including action items in the action bar), the system calls your activity's onOptionsItemSelected() method. This method passes the MenuItem selected. You can identify the item by calling getItemId(), which returns the unique ID for the menu item (defined by the android:id attribute in the menu resource 

 To Handle click events override  onOptionsItemSelected  method


                               @Override
                     public boolean onOptionsItemSelected(MenuItem item) {
                         // Handle item selection
                        
                      
                         switch (item.getItemId()) {
                             case R.id.ChangeColor:
                                                              // write code to execute when clicked on this option
                                                                return true;   

                             case R.id.phoneInformation:
                                                             // write code to execute when clicked on this option
                                                             return true;
                            
                              case R.id.callInfo:
                                                              // write code to execute when clicked on this option
                                                             return true;
                                
                             case R.id.email:
                                                            // write code to execute when clicked on this option
                                                              return true;
                                
                               default:
                                                   return super.onOptionsItemSelected(item);
                         }
                     }