Fragments and the action bar

We can access the action bar from a fragment and make customizations to aid the user on a per-fragment basis. Items can be added, and you can also customize the up navigation, keeping a consistent structure with the rest of the app.

How to do it...

When a fragment is added to the activity, we can allow that fragment to add items to the action bar. This is similar to providing items from the activity. Let's take a look at the following steps:

1. First, we want to add items to the action bar from the fragment, so we let the activity know we have a menu:

   public override void OnCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
     base.OnCreate(savedInstanceState);
     SetHasOptionsMenu(true);
   }

   Tip

   If the target Android version is below version 3.0, the HasOptionsMenu property is used instead of the SetHasOptionsMenu() method.

2. We then create the menu structure in the menu resource folder:

   <menu xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
     xmlns:yourapp="http://schemas.android...