How do I open the SearchView programmatically?

There is this widget for the ActionBar which called 'SearchView'. When it's not in use, it looks like this:

And when it's in use, it looks like this:

I want (programmatically of course) to open the searchview (make it "in use").

I tried several functions such as:

SearchView searchView = (SearchView) menu.findItem(R.id.menu_search).getActionView();
    searchView.setOnQueryTextListener(this);
    
    searchView.performClick();
    searchView.requestFocus();

But none of those worked...

The SearchView in the XML:

<item android:id="@+id/menu_search"
      android:title="Search"
      android:icon="@drawable/ic_action_search"
      android:showAsAction="ifRoom|collapseActionView"
      android:actionViewClass="android.widget.SearchView" />

Expand the SearchView with

searchView.setIconified(false);

and collapse it with

searchView.setIconified(true);

You need to change the value of android:showAsAction from ifRoom|collapseActionView to always. The SearchView's attribute android:iconifiedByDefault should be true, which is the default value, otherwise the user can not collapse the SearchView after it was expanded programmatically.

Try to call expandActionView() on MenuItem, not onActionViewExpanded() on ActionView.

It works for me.

MenuItem searchMenuItem = menu.findItem(R.id.menu_search);
searchView = (SearchView) searchMenuItem.getActionView();
searchMenuItem.expandActionView();

If you want to use support library only when necessary, do this

    MenuItem searchMenuItem = menu.findItem(R.id.action_search);
    if (Utils.hasIceCreamSandwich())
        searchMenuItem.expandActionView();
    else MenuItemCompat.expandActionView(searchMenuItem);

else simply do this

    MenuItem searchMenuItem = menu.findItem(R.id.action_search);
    MenuItemCompat.expandActionView(searchMenuItem);

I know this is late but

Try calling expandActionView() to open it and collapseActionView() to close it. You can call requestFocus() on the actual Action View via getActionView() to give the search view focus :)

For androidx.appcompat.widget.SearchView,

searchView.setIconifiedByDefault(true)   // didn't work

searchMenuItem.expandActionView()  // didn't work

MenuItemCompat.expandActionView(searchMenuItem) // didn't work

searchView.onActionViewExpanded()  // didn't work

The following worked for me,

searchView.findViewById<View>(R.id.search_button).performClick()

Expanding the answer of Matthias Robberts:

I wanted a list fragment to keep it's search value and set it after user returns from other fragment.

if (myViewModel.filterTextSaved.isNotEmpty()) { // Kotlin, storing state in ViewModel
    searchItem.expandActionView() // needs to come first, otherwise empty text
    theTextArea.setText(courseViewModel.filterTextOnClick)
}

and for the menu I keep always|collapseActionView, otherwise it stays open when user deletes the text.

To open up a searchView keeping the close_button in the end use this in onCreate:-

searchView.findViewById(R.id.search_button).performClick();

I was searching for a solution to expand SearchView programmatically because I need to restore expand state. No one solution was worked for me. Except using Handler().post(). I know it's not a good practice to use post(). But I'm working on legacy project and this workaround is acceptable for me.

Initialize variables block

val searchMenuItem = menu.findItem(R.id.menu_search_item)
val searchView = searchMenuItem.actionView as SearchView

How to expand SearchView:

Handler().post {
   searchMenuItem.expandActionView()
}

Reason why post() helps: if your app is not well written it may doing too much work on UI thread. post() ensures that your block of code will be executed when UI thread will be available for execution. Which means if you are using this workaround you can notice small delay between SearchView expanding