SearchView.setQuery() before user clicked on magnifier menuitem

Question

I have a SearchView item in my menu:

<item
    android:id="@+id/search_toolbar_main"
    android:icon="@drawable/ic_search_black_24dp"
    app:showAsAction="always|collapseActionView"
    app:actionViewClass="androidx.appcompat.widget.SearchView"
    android:title="Search" />

Now I want to programmatically open the searchview and set text with searchView.setQuery(). But if I do searchView.setQuery() before user clicked the magnifier menuitem nothing happens.

Answer 1

You can call to expandActionView() method to focus it

@Override
public boolean onCreateOptionsMenu( Menu menu )
{
    super.onCreateOptionsMenu( menu );

    MenuItem searchMenuItem = menu.findItem( R.id.search_toolbar_main ); 
    searchMenuItem.expandActionView(); // Expand the search menu item in order to show by default the query

    return true;
}