Question

I would like to implement a drop down with label “CATEGORY” in android.

Here, when I click on the “CATEGORY” button, then a list should be populated. But, when I select any item in that list, then I dont want to change the label “CATEGORY”.

How to do that?

Answer 1

Once you understand how a spinner works, this becomes easy. 🙂

The spinner uses the getView method to populate the closed spinner, and the getDropDownView method to create the dropdown. With this information you can create a custom adapter that can have something other than the current selection showing in the closed view. This also lets you avoid having to have non-data (like the word “CATEGORY”) in your data.

A quick example:

public class CustomAdapter extends ArrayAdapter { 
    private Context context; 
    private int textViewResourceId; 
    private String[] objects; 

    public CustomAdapter(Context context, int textViewResourceId, 
            String[] objects) { 
        super(context, textViewResourceId, objects); 
        this.context = context; 
        this.textViewResourceId = textViewResourceId; 
        this.objects = objects; 
    } 

    @Override 
    public View getView(int position, View convertView, ViewGroup parent) { 
        if (convertView == null) 
            convertView = View.inflate(context, textViewResourceId, null); 
            TextView tv = (TextView) convertView; 
            tv.setText("CATEGORY"); 
        } 
        return convertView; 
    } 
} 

The rest of the spinner would function as normal, so you could capture the selection in the onItemSelectedListener.