Question

How would I go about adding a context menu to a spinner popup?

I have a spinner that is populated by a database cursor, and I’d like to have a context menu so when the user long clicks an item they can edit or delete the item (two options in context menu).

I can’t seem to find a way to register a context menu for the window that appears with the selectable items. Is there a way to, like on a list View?

Otherwise, what about having a hidden view that is registered for a context menu and then use the spinner’s OnItemLongClickListener call openContextMenu for the hidden view? This seems kind of like a hack so I’d rather do it the correct way, if possible.

Or maybe I should just register the spinner for the context menu instead of having a hidden one…

Thanks!

Answer 1

How would I go about adding a context menu to a spinner popup?

Ideally, you wouldn’t even try. Classic pop-up context menus are going to be obsolete with the new Honeycomb UI, at least for the tablet form factor, so I would not invest a ton of time in hacking them into widgets where they aren’t normally used.

Moreover, users are unlikely to discover your context menu, simply because they tend not to discover context menus too often in the first place. Users tend not to experiment by randomly stabbing the screen for a second-plus to see if menus happen to pop up. The only way they will know about your context menu is if they read the fine manual, and we all know how often that happens. Hence, you need some other way for the user to do the same operations — having them be able to edit/delete only through a non-discoverable context menu is very user-hostile. Hence, context menus are, at best, an accelerant, and not worth forcing into unexpected and unsupported places.

I have a spinner that is populated by a database cursor, and I’d like to have a context menu so when the user long clicks an item they can edit or delete the item (two options in context menu).

If you want the context menu, convert the Spinner into a ListView. Not only will this be incrementally more discoverable (some users will be used to interesting things if they long-tap on a list item), but context menus work naturally.

If you really want, you can clone Spinner (and possibly AbsSpinner or other superclasses) into your project, so you can take control over the drop-down behavior, then write something that enables a context menu on the selection dialog box. Then, you will need to bear in mind that none of that will work, most likely, with the new Spinner in Android 3.0, simply because there is no more selection dialog box.