Spinner has no items Android Studio Kotlin in Fragment

Question

sorry, major noob here. i have a settings fragment in my app and i want a dropdown menu to be in there. however, no matter what i try the dropdown menu has no items. my code is mostly based on this. here is my settings fragment:

class SettingsFragment: Fragment(),AdapterView.OnItemSelectedListener {


override fun onCreateView(
    inflater: LayoutInflater, container: ViewGroup?,
    savedInstanceState: Bundle?
): View? {
    val binding = FragmentSettingsBinding.inflate(inflater)
    val spinner : Spinner = binding.translationSelector
    // Create an ArrayAdapter using the string array and a default spinner layout
    ArrayAdapter.createFromResource(
        requireActivity(),
        R.array.planets_array,
        android.R.layout.simple_spinner_item
    ).also { adapter ->
        // Specify the layout to use when the list of choices appears
        adapter.setDropDownViewResource(android.R.layout.simple_spinner_dropdown_item)
        // Apply the adapter to the spinner
        spinner.adapter = adapter
    }

    return inflater.inflate(R.layout.fragment_settings, container, false)
}

override fun onItemSelected(arg0: AdapterView<*>, arg1: View, position: Int, id: Long) {
    val toastNotice = "you selected choice # " + position
    val duration = Toast.LENGTH_SHORT
    val toast = Toast.makeText(this.context,toastNotice,duration)
    toast.show()
}

override fun onNothingSelected(arg0: AdapterView<*>) {

}

you may notice i am using "requireActivity()" as a parameter to createFromResource instead of "this", since "this" gives a type mismatch...not sure if i should be doing this, but i saw it somewhere in stackoverflow. here is my layout xml:

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<layout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools">

    <data>
        <variable
            name="viewModel"
            type="com.example.edtma.ScriptureModel" />
    </data>

    <LinearLayout
        android:layout_width="match_parent"
        android:layout_height="match_parent"
        android:orientation="vertical"
        tools:context=".SettingsFragment"
        android:background="#E4E1E1">


        <Spinner
            android:id="@+id/translationSelector"
            android:layout_width="wrap_content"
            android:layout_height="wrap_content"
            android:contentDescription="@string/SpinnerLabel"
            android:minHeight="48dp" />

    </LinearLayout>
</layout>

when i run this, the settings fragment has a little arrow for a spinner, but it has no items. in case you are curious this is my strings.xml

    <resources>
    <string name="app_name">edtma</string>
    <string-array name="planets_array">
        <item>Mercury</item>
        <item>Venus</item>
        <item>Earth</item>
        <item>Mars</item>
        <item>Jupiter</item>
        <item>Saturn</item>
        <item>Uranus</item>
        <item>Neptune</item>
    </string-array>
</resources>

any help would be much appreciated. i held out as long as possible trying other solutions posted on here but could not get anything to work. heres a screenshot of my fragment with empty dropdown

Answer 1

in case it helps anyone else, i finally found the issue. my return statement for onCreateView should be returning binding.root, ie change this:

return inflater.inflate(R.layout.fragment_settings, container, false)

to this:

return binding.root