The SearchView is part of the Android SDK beginning in Android 3.0 and allows a user to enter a search query and then submit that request to a search provider, it can also show suggestions and results if configured. This widget can be added to the activity layout or can be integrated into the ActionBar . If placed on the ActionBar , you can define the SearchView to show at all times, only when there is room, or as a collapsible action, which displays the SearchView as an icon initially, then takes up the entire app bar as a search field when the user clicks the icon. On this example, I will explain how to integrate the SearchView to the ActionBar and submit a query a within the same Activity . Implementation The first thing that you need is to create the configuration file for the ActionBar menu item, on the res/menu/ folder of your project. On menu_main.xml , we define how to create the search item, such as the icon to use and the title of the item. See the file bel...