Cannot get ic_action_search.png to show in Action Bar

Question

I am working through the Android tutorial and cannot get my search icon to appear in my action bar.

I'm not sure what I am missing, but am new so I don't know where to look.

This is in my main_activity_actions.xml

<menu xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
    <!--  Search, should appear as action button -->
    <item android:id="@+id/action_search"
        android:icon="@drawable/ic_action_search"
        android:title="@string/action_search"
        android:showAsAction="always" />

    <!--  Settings, hsould awlays be in teh overflow -->
    <item android:id="@+id/action_settings"
        android:title="@string/action_settings"
        android:showAsAction="never" />
</menu>

This is in my MainActivity.java file:

@Override
public boolean onCreateOptionsMenu(Menu menu) {

    // Inflate the menu; this adds items to the action bar if it is present.
    MenuInflater inflater = getMenuInflater();
    inflater.inflate(R.menu.main_activity_actions, menu);
    return super.onCreateOptionsMenu(menu);
}

I have downloaded the ic_action_search.png files and placed them into the following respective directories:

/home/user/workspace/MyFirstApp/res/drawable-hdpi
/home/user/workspace/MyFirstApp/res/drawable-mdpi
/home/user/workspace/MyFirstApp/res/drawable-xhdpi
/home/user/workspace/MyFirstApp/res/drawable-xxhdpi

When I run the application via Eclipse, I do see the following error in the logcat console, but I'm not sure if they are referring to the png files or not?

<snip>
05-11 21:51:17.823: I/Adreno200-EGLSUB(32725): <ConfigWindowMatch:2087>: Format RGBA_8888.
05-11 21:51:17.833: D/memalloc(32725): ion: Mapped buffer base:0x506af000 size:1949696 offset:0 fd:59
05-11 21:51:17.833: E/(32725): Can't open file for reading
05-11 21:51:17.833: E/(32725): Can't open file for reading
05-11 21:51:17.843: D/OpenGLRenderer(32725): Enabling debug mode 0
<snip>

Where else can I check to determine why the search icon will not appear in the Action Bar?

** EDIT **

Following jay's recommendation below I've changed the main_activity_actions.xml to the following. This puts the string value into the Action bar, but not the icon. Does android know to look in the image folders automatically?

<menu xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" 
        xmlns:yourapp="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto">
    <!--  Search, should appear as action button -->
    <item android:id="@+id/action_search"
        yourapp:icon="@drawable/ic_action_search"
        android:title="@string/action_search"
        yourapp:showAsAction="always" />

    <!--  Settings, hsould awlays be in teh overflow -->
    <item android:id="@+id/action_settings"
        android:title="@string/action_settings"
        android:showAsAction="never" />
</menu>

Answer 1

if you miss xmlns:yourapp="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto" this line to your menu then image cant get check it.

Answer 2

I also had this issue, while trying to follow a tutorial. I tried all the solutions shown, including adding

xmlns:yourapp="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto"

Nothing worked. My icon would still not display in the ActionBar What I finally noticed was that the tutorial had 3 versions of the styles.xml file, whereas my project only had a single styles.xml.

The additional styles were this: (styles.xml) in the res\values-v11 folder:

<resources>

<!--
    Base application theme for API 11+. This theme completely replaces
    AppBaseTheme from res/values/styles.xml on API 11+ devices.
-->
<style name="AppBaseTheme" parent="android:Theme.Holo.Light">
    <!-- API 11 theme customizations can go here. -->
</style>

and this, in the res\values-v14 folder:

<resources>

<!--
    Base application theme for API 14+. This theme completely replaces
    AppBaseTheme from BOTH res/values/styles.xml and
    res/values-v11/styles.xml on API 14+ devices.
-->
<style name="AppBaseTheme" parent="android:Theme.Holo.Light.DarkActionBar">
    <!-- API 14 theme customizations can go here. -->
</style>

when I dropped these two files in my res folder, it worked.

Answer 3

The best thing to do would be to download the search icon or for that reason, any icon from google developer site itself and modify accordingly.

https://www.google.com/design/icons/#ic_search

save the icon image in the res/drawable folder and refresh Android Studio.