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Spinner

Spinners provide a quick way to select one value from a set. In the default state, a spinner shows its currently selected value. Touching the spinner displays a dropdown menu with all other available values, from which the user can select a new one.

<Spinner
    android:id="@+id/sort_by_spinner"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content" />

Populate Spinner with choices with XML

You can populate the Spinner using a string-array resource. Create a file the Resources\Values folder and call it array.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<resources>
    <string-array name="cities">
        <item>Home</item>
        <item>Work</item>
        <item>Other</item>
        <item>Custom</item>
    </string-array>
</resources>

Now you can populate the entries for the spinner using the data from the xml file.

<Spinner
    android:entries="@array/cities"
    android:layout_width="wrap_content"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"/>

Spinner Mode

The spinner by default displays a dropdown, but it can be changed to show a dialog using the android:spinnerMode="dialog".

Populate Spinner with code

To populate the spinner in code, you will need to create a custom array adapter, then bind the array adapter to the spinner or create it using an existing xml file with a string array.

Spinner spinner = (Spinner) findViewById(R.id.spinner);
// Create an ArrayAdapter using the string array and a default spinner layout
ArrayAdapter<CharSequence> adapter = ArrayAdapter.createFromResource(this,
        R.array.planets_array, android.R.layout.simple_spinner_dropdown_item);
// Specify the layout to use when the list of choices appears
adapter.setDropDownViewResource(android.R.layout.simple_spinner_custom_layout);
// Apply the adapter to the spinner
spinner.setAdapter(adapter);

Getting and Setting Values

Get the selected item out a spinner using:

String value = spinner.getSelectedItem().toString();

Setting spinner item based on value (rather than item position):

public void setSpinnerToValue(Spinner spinner, String value) {
    int index = 0;
    SpinnerAdapter adapter = spinner.getAdapter();
    for (int i = 0; i < adapter.getCount(); i++) {
        if (adapter.getItem(i).equals(value)) {
            index = i;
            break; // terminate loop
        }
    }
    spinner.setSelection(index);
}

Customizing Spinner Items

Changing text size on the <Spinner> tag has no effect on the actual dropdown items. To change their styles, you need to create a custom array adapter and layout file. First, you should create a spinner_item1.xml

<TextView xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:id="@android:id/text1"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    style:"@style/spinner_dropdown_style1"
    android:textColor="#ff0000" />

Define your style to inherit from Widget.AppCompat.DropDownItem.Spinner so that it will inherit the correct spacing for dropdown items. Otherwise, you may notice the dropdown items are too closely spaced or not enough margin to the left-hand side:

<style name="spinner_dropdown_style_theme1" parent="Widget.AppCompat.DropDownItem.Spinner">
     <item name="android:textColor">@android:color/white</item>
     <item name="android:background">#507B91</item>
</style>

You then bind the string array of items to the layout:

ArrayAdapter adapter = ArrayAdapter.createFromResource(this, R.array.planets_array, R.layout.spinner_item);
spinner.setAdapter(adapter);