Support v7 ActionBarActivity, OnCreateOptionsMenu() called after each call to SupportInvalidateOptionsMenu()

Issue

In my Activity which is a Support v7 ActionBarActivity, I have menu and a navigation drawer.

When ever the navigation drawer is open I want to hide the menu items. I hide them in the onPrepareOptionsMenu().

As stated in the documentation from android, in order to trigger an onPrepareOptionsMenu() you need to call supportInvalidateOptionsMenu().

I'm doing just that. But after I call supportInvalidateOptionsMenu(), the onCreateOptionsMenu() is called and than the onPrepareOptionsMenu().

As I understood the onCreateOptionsMenu() should be called only once at the beginning of the Activity.

Am I missing something?

Solution

The correct cycle is:

• Calling supportInvalidateOptionsMenu() leads to the menu getting recreated, i.e. onCreateOptionsMenu() gets called.
• Whenever onCreateOptionsMenu() is called, onPrepareOptionsMenu() is called to prepare the menu.

So calling supportInvalidateOptionsMenu() will always lead to onCreateOptionsMenu() getting called. Hope this helps clear the confusion.

Answered By - Yash Sampat