when using app:menu in android's Toolbar I cannot locate the menu items

Issue

I'm trying to use the following xml to inflate my toolbar

<com.google.android.material.appbar.AppBarLayout
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:fitsSystemWindows="true">

    <com.google.android.material.appbar.MaterialToolbar
        android:id="@+id/toolbar"
        style="?toolbarStyle"
        android:layout_width="match_parent"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        app:menu="@menu/report_list"
        app:navigationIcon="@drawable/ic_nav_back"
        app:subtitle="@string/select_create_report"
        app:title="@string/damage_reports" />
</com.google.android.material.appbar.AppBarLayout>

I can locate the toolbar inside my inflated xml like so:

mToolbar = findViewById(R.id.toolbar)

and the menu shows correctly

my problem is that since I haven't inflated the toolbar through onCreateOptionsMenu I can't use onOptionsItemSelected to handle events.

so I decided to add straight listeners to the different menu items.

but the thing is that I can't get a reference to them, when I use

 mToolbar.findViewById(R.id.search_reports)

it returns null (which frankly I expected) but when I also use

mToolbar.menu.findItem(R.id.search_reports)

I also get null

however when I inspect mToolbar.actionItems[0] I see that the SearchView's string representation shows that its id is

androidx.appcompat.widget.SearchView{c1aeba0 VFE...... ......I. 0,0-0,0 #7f0800fb app:id/search_reports}

and mId from that action item is 2131230971 which translates to 7F0800FB which when searching inside build/generated points to

public static final int search_reports=0x7f0800fb;

but when I inspect R.id.search_reports instead of 2131230971 (which would make the findMenuItem work) I get -1000038

is there something wrong with the setup of my application? or is there a different way to find a specific menu item

edit: as a side note this seems to work

mToolbar.setOnMenuItemClickListener(this::menuItemClicked)

private fun menuItemClicked(item: MenuItem): Boolean {
    return when (item.itemId) {
        R.id.search_reports -> {
            vm.search_stuff()
            true
        }
        else -> false
    }

but I would still like to know why findItem does not work

edit 2: for those that may come upon this, it seems that during evaluation and debugging the resource numbers are indeed different, but if you actually place mToolbar.menu.findItem(R.id.search_reports) in your code and run it , it will work, even though it does not work while debugging

Solution

You can set click listener on item like this:

    Toolbar toolbar = findViewById(R.id.toolbar);

    //remember your menu item id !! mine is R.id.psMenuRefresh

    toolbar.getMenu().findItem(R.id.psMenuRefresh).setOnMenuItemClickListener(new MenuItem.OnMenuItemClickListener() {
        @Override
        public boolean onMenuItemClick(MenuItem menuItem) {
            Log.i("mytag","helooo");
            return false;
        }
    });

There you go.

Answered By - UrosKekovic