What's the best way to implement a Application wide Options menu on Android?

Question

I'm an Android newbie, and working on an app which needs an Options menu. I have currently implemented the options menu by setting it as the primary activity and Extending it in the main activity.

But since I work in a team, this method doesn't work always with us since we need to extend another activity which is essential.

My Question How do I implement this Options Menu across the application without Extending the activity in my Main activity?

My Current Setup

1. I have a MainActivity (This starts first) - MainActivity extends MenuClass
2. I have the OptionsMenu Class, MenuClass (I want this to be Application wide) - MenuClass extends Activity
3. I have three other Classes, that extends Activity itself! And these three activities are triggered from the MainActivity and when done, returns to the MainActivity.

Answer 1

If you don't want to, or can't create a base Activity which every other activity then extends - why don't you have a utilities class which has a public static void onCreateOptionsMenu(Menu menu, MenuInflater inflater) {...} function and a public static boolean onOptionsItemSelected(MenuItem item) {...}?

public class Utils {
    public static void onCreateOptionsMenu(Menu menu, MenuInflater inflater ){
        //... create default options here
    }

    public static boolean onOptionsItemSelected(MenuItem item) {
        //... see if you want to handle the selected option here, return true if handled
    }
  }

then from you Activity you can do this:

public class YourActivity extends Activity {

// ...


public void onCreateOptionsMenu(Menu menu, MenuInflater inflater ){
   Utils.onOptionsItemSelected(menu, inflater);
   //... add other options here
}


public boolean onOptionsItemSelected(MenuItem item) {
    boolean handled = Utils.onOptionsItemSelected(item);
    if (!handled) {
        switch(item.getItemId()) {
            case R.id.menu_sign_out:
                //... deal with option
            break;
            //.. deal with other options
        }
    }
    return handled;
}

You may want to change the exact implementation of this depending on how you build it in to your app - ie you may not want the utils methods to be static as you may require some state to be maintained in there, but this should work.