Android Tutorial

Android Tutorial 201

Enabling the ContextMenu

The ContextMenu is a subtype of Menu that you can configure to

display when a long press is performed on a View. As the name

implies, the ContextMenu provides for contextual menus to display

to the user for performing additional actions on selected items.

ContextMenu objects are slightly more complex than OptionsMenu

objects. You need to implement the onCreateContextMenu()

method of your Activity for one to display. However, before that is

called, you must call the registerForContextMenu() method and

pass in the View for which you want to have a context menu. This

means each View on your screen can have a different context

menu, which is appropriate as the menus are designed to be highly

contextual.

Here we have an example of a Chronometer timer, which responds

to a long click with a context menu:

registerForContextMenu(timer);

After the call to the registerForContextMenu() method has been

executed, the user can then long click on the View to open the

context menu. Each time this happens, your Activity gets a call to

the onCreateContextMenu() method, and your code creates the

menu each time the user performs the long click.

The following is an example of a context menu for the Chronometer

control, as previously used:

public void onCreateContextMenu(
ContextMenu menu, View v, ContextMenuInfo menuInfo) {
super.onCreateContextMenu(menu, v, menuInfo);