Identifying the view selected in a ContextMenu (Android)

Question

In Android, onContextItemSelected has a single MenuItem argument and so it isn't clear how to identify the view selected. MenuItem.getMenuInfo provides access to Contextmenu.ContextMenuInfo, but while both known subclasses provide access to the target view, there does not appear to be an accessor on the interface.

One alternative is to save the View provided in onCreateContextMenu in a private class variable which relies on onCreateContextMenu not being called again in the activity before onContextItemSelected. Another is to use the id of the View for the itemId argument of ContextMenu.add. If we do this, we would then need to identify the option selected from the context menu by using its (possibly internationalised) title.

What is the best method for identifying the View selected in onContextSelected?

Answer 1

There is no such concept as "identifying the View selected" for either option menus or context menus in Android. Hence, it is rather difficult to answer your question. So, I'll take some guesses.

If by "identifying the View selected" you mean which menu choice was selected, that is getItemId() on the MenuItem that is passed to onOptionsItemSelected() or onContextItemSelected().

If by "identifying the View selected" you mean which row in a ListView was the one long-tapped on to bring up the context menu, cast getMenuInfo() (called on the MenuItem) to AdapterView.AdapterContextMenuInfo, then use either the id or the position values as appropriate based on your adapter. See here for a sample project that uses this technique.

If by "identifying the View selected" you mean you have more than one non-ListView context menu in an activity, I would not use that UI technique.