How to create an Autocomplete Android EditText Example

In order to implement Autocomplete in Android EditText we need to use an AutoCompleteTextView View in the layout.xml file to represent an EditText.

This is a custom view that can be used to suggest text automatically while the user is typing.

The suggestions are displayed in the dropdown menu.

Lets see an Example :

<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="com.code2care.example.autocompleteedittextexample.AutoCompleteEditText" >
    <TextView
        android:id="@+id/textView1"
        android:layout_width="wrap_content"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:layout_alignParentTop="true"
        android:layout_centerHorizontal="true"
        android:layout_marginTop="48dp"
        android:text="@string/title" />
    <AutoCompleteTextView
        android:id="@+id/autocompleteEditTextView"
        android:layout_width="match_parent"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:layout_below="@+id/textView1"
        android:layout_centerHorizontal="true"
        android:layout_marginTop="108dp"
        android:ems="10"
        android:text=""
        android:textColor="#000000" />
</RelativeLayout>

Activity.java file :

package com.code2care.example.autocompleteedittextexample;
import android.os.Bundle;
import android.support.v7.app.ActionBarActivity;
import android.view.Menu;
import android.view.MenuItem;
import android.widget.ArrayAdapter;
import android.widget.AutoCompleteTextView;
public class AutoCompleteEditText extends ActionBarActivity {
    AutoCompleteTextView autoTextView;
    @Override
    protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        setContentView(R.layout.activity_auto_complete_edit_text);
        String[] ProgLanguages = { "Java", "C", "C++", ".Net", "PHP", "Perl",
                "Objective-c", "Small-Talk", "C#", "Ruby", "ASP", "ASP .NET" };
        autoTextView = (AutoCompleteTextView) findViewById(R.id.autocompleteEditTextView);
        ArrayAdapter<String> arrayAdapter = new ArrayAdapter<String>(this,
                android.R.layout.select_dialog_item, ProgLanguages);
        //Used to specify minimum number of 
               //characters the user has to type in order to display the drop down hint.
        autoTextView.setThreshold(1);
        //Setting adapter
        autoTextView.setAdapter(arrayAdapter);
    }
    @Override
    public boolean onCreateOptionsMenu(Menu menu) {
        getMenuInflater().inflate(R.menu.auto_complete_edit_text, menu);
        return true;
    }
    @Override
    public boolean onOptionsItemSelected(MenuItem item) {
        int id = item.getItemId();
        if (id == R.id.action_settings) {
            return true;
        }
        return super.onOptionsItemSelected(item);
    }
}

⚠️ You can download the Source code for this tutorial at GitHub: https://github.com/code2care/AutoCompleteEditTextExample