Android Spinner selection

Question

The OnItemSelectedListener event handler gets called both when a spinner selection is changed programmatically, and when a user physically clicks the spinner control. Is is possible to determine if an event was triggered by a user selection somehow?

Or is there another way to handle spinner user selections?

Answer 1

In the past I've done things like this to distinguish

internal++; // 'internal' is an integer field initialized to 0
textBox.setValue("...."); // listener should not act on this internal setting
internal--;

Then in textBox's listener

if (internal == 0) {
  // ... Act on user change action
}

I use ++ and -- rather than setting a boolean value to 'true' so that there is no worry when methods nest other methods that might also set the internal change indicator.

Answer 2

I tried to post an action at the end of the MessageQueue but it doesn't work anymore... i need help !!

Answer 3

To workaround you need to remember the last selected position. Then inside of your spinner listener compare the last selected position with the new one. If they are different, then process the event and also update the last selected position with new position value, else just skip the event processing.

If somewhere within the code you are going to programatically change spinner selected position and you don't want the listener to process the event, then just reset the last selected position to the one you're going to set.

Yes, Spinner in Android is painful. I'd even say pain starts from its name - "Spinner". Isn't it a bit misleading? :) As far as we're talking about it you should also be aware there's a bug - Spinner may not restore (not always) its state (on device rotation), so make sure you handle Spinner's state manually.