Enabling/disabling menu items on the fly

In one of my applications, I want to disable some menu entries if the database is not valid or is not present at all. To do that, I make use of the onPrepareOptionsMenu() API.

Let’s say the user is on the Quiz activity. When the user presses the MENU button, the Quiz item should not be there anymore; and until the application validates the presence of a database, I want the Books item to be unclickable.

So I inflate my menu as usual from the XML file:

@Override
public boolean onCreateOptionsMenu(Menu menu) {
    MenuInflater inflater = getMenuInflater();
    inflater.inflate(R.menu.my_menu, menu);
    
    removeSomeItems(menu);
    return true;
}

private void removeSomeItems(Menu menu){
    MenuItem books = menu.findItem(R.id.menu_books);
    books.setEnabled(false);  // I want this item to be available eventually
    menu.removeItem(R.id.menu_quiz); // I want this item to be unavailablefor this activity
}

You have to remember though, that this method is called only ONCE, the very first time the user opens the menu.

The activity does its business as usual. When I am done checking if the database is there already, I want the user to be able to use the Books item. I have a boolean field that I set when the database is validated, and so now I can enable the menu.

@Override
public boolean onPrepareOptionsMenu (Menu menu){
    super.onPrepareOptionsMenu(menu);
    if(mIsDbValid){
        MenuItem books = menu.findItem(R.id.menu_books);
        books.setEnabled(true);
    }
    return true;
}

You can change the contents of the menu as often as you want using onPrepareOptionsMenu() because that method is called each and every time the user presses the MENU button.

And that’s it!