Android AutoCompleteTextView Control

A AutoCompleteTextView is a view that is similar to EditText, except that it shows a list of completion suggestions automatically while the user is typing.

The list of suggestions is displayed in drop down menu. The user can choose an item from there to replace the content of edit box with.

AutoCompleteTextView Attributes

Following are the important attributes related to AutoCompleteTextView control. You can check Android official documentation for complete list of attributes and related methods which you can use to change these attributes are run time.

Example

This example will take you through simple steps to show how to create your own Android application using Linear Layout and AutoCompleteTextView.

Following is the content of the modified main activity file src/com.example.guidemo3/MainActivity.java. This file can include each of the fundamental lifecycle methods.

package com.example.guidemo3;

import android.os.Bundle;
import android.app.Activity;
import android.view.Menu;
import android.widget.ArrayAdapter;
import android.widget.AutoCompleteTextView;

public class MainActivity extends Activity {
   AutoCompleteTextView autocompletetextview;
   
   String[] arr = { "Paries,France", "PA,United States","Parana,Brazil", "Padua,Italy", "Pasadena,CA,United States"};
   
   @Override
   protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
      super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
      setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);

      autocomplete = (AutoCompleteTextView)             
      findViewById(R.id.autoCompleteTextView1);

      ArrayAdapter<String> adapter = new ArrayAdapter<String>  
      (this,android.R.layout.select_dialog_item, arr);

      autocomplete.setThreshold(2);
      autocomplete.setAdapter(adapter);
   }
}

Following will be the content of res/layout/activity_main.xml file −

<RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
   xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools"
   android:layout_width="match_parent"
   android:layout_height="match_parent"
   android:paddingBottom="@dimen/activity_vertical_margin"
   android:paddingLeft="@dimen/activity_horizontal_margin"
   android:paddingRight="@dimen/activity_horizontal_margin"
   android:paddingTop="@dimen/activity_vertical_margin"
   tools:context=".MainActivity" >
   
<DatePicker
    android:layout_width="wrap_content"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:id="@+id/datePicker"
    android:layout_centerHorizontal="true"
    android:layout_centerVertical="true" />
    
</RelativeLayout>

Following will be the content of res/values/strings.xml to define these new constants −

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<resources>
   <string name="app_name">GUIDemo3</string>
   <string name="action_settings">Settings</string>
   <string name="example_autocompletetextview">Example showing AutoCompleteTextView</string>
</resources>

Following is the default content of AndroidManifest.xml −

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<manifest xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
   package="com.example.guidemo3"
   android:versionCode="1"
   android:versionName="1.0" >
   
   <uses-sdk
      android:minSdkVersion="8"
      android:targetSdkVersion="22" />
      
   <application
      android:allowBackup="true"
      android:icon="@drawable/ic_launcher"
      android:label="@string/app_name"
      android:theme="@style/AppTheme" >
      
      <activity
         android:name="com.example.guidemo3.MainActivity"
         android:label="@string/app_name" >
      
         <intent-filter>
            <action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN" />
            <category android:name="android.intent.category.LAUNCHER" />
         </intent-filter>
      
      </activity>
      
   </application>
</manifest>

Let's try to run your GUIDemo3 application. I assume you had created your AVD while doing environment setup. To run the app from Android Studio, open one of your project's activity files and click Run icon from the toolbar. Android Studio installs the app on your AVD and starts it and if everything is fine with your setup and application, it will display following Emulator window −

The following screen will appear after "pa" will be typed in AutoCompleteTextView −

Exercise

I will recommend to try above example with different attributes of AutoCompleteTextView in Layout XML file as well at programming time to have different look and feel of the AutoCompleteTextView. Try to make it editable, change to font color, font family, width, textSize etc and see the result. You can also try above example with multiple AutoCompleteTextView controls in one activity.

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