Android – Auto Complete

August 9,2016

In order to use AutoCompleteTextView you have to first create an AutoCompletTextView Field in the xml. Its syntax is given below.

<AutoCompleteTextView
   android:id="@+id/autoCompleteTextView1"
   android:layout_width="wrap_content"
   android:layout_height="wrap_content"
   android:layout_alignParentTop="true"
   android:layout_centerHorizontal="true"
   android:layout_marginTop="65dp"
   android:ems="10" >

After that, you have to get a reference of this textview in java. Its syntax is given below.

private AutoCompleteTextView actv;
actv = (AutoCompleteTextView) findViewById(R.id.autoCompleteTextView1);

The the next thing you need to do is to specify the list of suggestions items to be displayed. You can specify the list items as a string array in java or in strings.xml. Its syntax is given below.

String[] countries = getResources().getStringArray(R.array.list_of_countries);
ArrayAdapter<String> adapter = new ArrayAdapter<String>
   (this,android.R.layout.simple_list_item_1,countries);
actv.setAdapter(adapter);

The array adapter class is responsible for displaying the data as list in the suggestion box of the text field. The setAdapter method is used to set the adapter of the autoCompleteTextView. Apart from these methods, the other methods of Auto Complete are listed below.

Sr.No Method & description
1 getAdapter()

This method returns a filterable list adapter used for auto completion
2 getCompletionHint()

This method returns optional hint text displayed at the bottom of the the matching list
3 getDropDownAnchor()

This method returns returns the id for the view that the auto-complete drop down list is anchored to.
4 getListSelection()

This method returns the position of the dropdown view selection, if there is one
5 isPopupShowing()

This method indicates whether the popup menu is showing
6 setText(CharSequence text, boolean filter)

This method sets text except that it can disable filtering
7 showDropDown()

This method displays the drop down on screen.

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