SearchView getActionView returning null

I had the same problem because in my menu I used: android:actionViewClass="android.widget.SearchView" as per the google documentation.

Well it turns out that if I'm using AppCompatActivity I should use app:actionViewClass="android.widget.SearchView" instead.

Hope this helps someone.

If you're using proguard this is the possible answer: https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=58508

In short, add below line to your proguard config file proguard-rules.pro.

-keep class android.support.v7.widget.SearchView { *; }

Today I had the same problem and I think I solved it. It turns out I did couple of things that were not exactly as per the ActionBarCompat contract:

• Each activity that uses the ActionBarCompat should extend ActionBarActivity instead of FragmentActivity directly
• Each activity that uses the ActionBarCompat should declare its theme as inheriting from the ActionBarCompat themes.

Both of those I found watching the explanation video from Google.

Now my searchView is not null anymore.