Setting Navigation Icon on Android ActionBar

Question

So I'm working on adding ActionBarSherlock and the Navigation Drawer to a project that previously implemented a custom (very poorly written) "action bar". Instead of using fragments and a backstack of activities for navigation, some activities show and hide different layouts. (That is, suppose I am in a list mode and then select a button to go into an edit screen. The app currently hides the list layout and shows another layout.).

So I've added actionbar sherlock and a navigation drawer to all the activities. I want to be able to programmatically switch the navigation icon from the 3 lines to the arrow when certain buttons are pressed.

I can't figure out how to do this though. Any ideas?

Thanks!

Answer 1

The solution to this problem is to use the method:

setDrawerIndicatorEnabled(boolean enable)

inside the ActionBarDrawerToggle class.

Answer 2

After:

drawer.setDrawerListener(toggle);

Use this code:

getSupportActionBar().setDisplayHomeAsUpEnabled(true);
getSupportActionBar().setHomeButtonEnabled(true);
getSupportActionBar().setHomeAsUpIndicator(R.drawable.select);

Answer 3

It depends how wedded you are to built-in actionbar artifacts. You can always redraw the current actionbar by inflating a layout of your choosing, then calling

getSherlockActivity().getSupportActionBar().setDisplayShowTitleEnabled(false);
getSherlockActivity().getSupportActionBar().setDisplayShowHomeEnabled(false);
getSherlockActivity().getSupportActionBar().setDisplayShowCustomEnabled(true);
// Inflate and do whatever you need to your view...
getSherlockActivity().getSupportActionBar().setCustomView(abView);
getSherlockActivity().getSupportActionBar().show();

When you want to go back to your standard (assuming you're using a DrawerLayout to do your navigation drawer), you can just set make a call to setDisplayShowCustomEnabled(false) (re-enable showHome and showTitle as you please).

Answer 4

As far as I know, customization of the back button can only be done via themes. Besides, swapping the drawer icon for the back icon (within the same Activity) doesn't make sense, since users would still be able to access the navigation drawer by sliding the left most edge to the right. It just wouldn't make sense.

If you absolutely need the back icon, then it would make the most sense to make that screen a new Activity since you would indeed be adding another "level" to the stack, which is what the back icon represents.