Auto Complete Text View | Android Beginner Dev Tutorial

This is a very simple tutorial on using Auto Complete Text View provided by Android SDK.


It consists of a single text box which can show suggestions based on a list of data that I provide as a source for this field. Just like Google Suggest, this also shows the nearest matches to the string that is being input by the end user.

So, here is the layout xml file:

<AutoCompleteTextView
android:id="@+id/AndroidBooks"
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"></AutoCompleteTextView>

Nothing special. It just consists of one element.

Now in the main activity, I create an array of android books:

String[] androidBooks =
{
"Hello, Android - Ed Burnette",
"Professional Android 2 App Dev - Reto Meier",
"Unlocking Android - Frank Ableson",
"Android App Development - Blake Meike",
"Pro Android 2 - Dave MacLean",
"Beginning Android 2 - Mark Murphy",
"Android Programming Tutorials - Mark Murphy",
"Android Wireless App Development - Lauren Darcey",
"Pro Android Games - Vladimir Silva",
};

Then in the onCreate(..) method, I create an ArrayAdapter that I can pass to this AutoCompleteTextView as the data Source.

ArrayAdapter<String> adapter = new ArrayAdapter<String>(this,android.R.layout.simple_dropdown_item_1line,androidBooks);

Then, I get a handle to the AutocompleteTextView, and set the arrayAdapter to it along with the Threshold. The Threshold defines the number of charaters a user should type before the suggestions start showing up.

AutoCompleteTextView acTextView = (AutoCompleteTextView)findViewById(R.id.AndroidBooks);
acTextView.setThreshold(3);
acTextView.setAdapter(adapter);

That is it. Now execute and see it work. 

This is the way it would look:

The example code can be downloaded here.