Android Voice Search

Rules for a good search experience —You need to provide good content —It has to be fast —It has to be simple

Search in Android —Persistent search —Expandable search

Persistent Search Use persistent search when search is the primary focus of your app.

Expandable Search Display a magnifying glass icon in the toolbar instead of a search text box.

Voice Search

Voice Search —When entering text, allow users to either use the keyboard or their voice. —Let Android handle voice recognition —Voice search is a great feature, but very error prone (and sometimes frustating) —It submits directly what it is said (so no opportunities for second attempts) —Combine text search and voice search

SearchView —It is built-in component in the Android framework —It lives in the Toolbar —When activated, turns your toolbar into a text input field —It can also provide historical results —Available in all Android versions (through AppCompat)

SearchView as MenuItem

@Override public boolean onCreateOptionsMenu(Menu menu) { getMenuInflater.inflate(R.menu.main_activity_options, menu); MenuItem searchItem = menu.findItem(R.id.action_search); SearchView searchView = (SearchView)MenuItemCompat.getActionView(searchItem); searchView.setOnQueryTextListener(new SearchView.OnQueryTextListener() { @Override public boolean onQueryTextChange(String newText) { // Text has changed, apply filtering? return false; } @Override public onQueryTextSubmit(String query) { // Perform the final search } }); }

Searchable Configuration —This is a configuration file for search settings: Info

AndroidManifest.xml

onCreateOptionsMenu() SearchManager searchManager = (SearchManager)getSystemService(Context.SEARCH_SERVICE); ComponentName componentName = new ComponentName(context, SearchableActivity.class); searchView.setSearchableInfo(searchManager.getSearchableInfo(componentName));

Getting the search query Call this from onCreate() or onNewIntent(). private void handleIntent(Intent intent) { if (Intent.ACTION_SEARCH.equals(intent.getAction())) { String query = intent.getStringExtra(SearchManager.QUERY); } }