actionlayout on menuitem does nothing

i am setting an actionLayout on a menu item and setting background color and image, but it's not respected. in my activity, i have:

getMenuInflater().inflate(R.menu.submit_action, menu);

my submit_action is:

<menu xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    xmlns:app="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto">
    <item android:id="@+id/action_submit"
        android:actionLayout="@layout/check"
        app:showAsAction="always"  />
</menu>

my check layout is

<RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    style="?android:attr/actionButtonStyle"
    android:layout_width="fill_parent"
    android:layout_height="fill_parent"
    android:background="#e8e8e8"
    android:clickable="true"
    android:contentDescription="lol" >

    <ImageView
        android:layout_width="wrap_content"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:contentDescription="@null"
        android:scaleType="centerInside"
        android:src="@drawable/ic_action_tick" />

</RelativeLayout>

but even with all of this setup, this is how the action bar appears, not showing my menuitem at all (but it's there, because it responds to the click, but doesn't appear):

Try app:actionLayout="@layout/check" instead of android:actionLayout="@layout/check".

If you're using ActionbarSherlock or AppCompat, the android: namespace will not work for MenuItems. This is because these libraries use custom attributes that mimic the Android APIs since they did not exist in earlier versions of the framework.

when using Appcompact ,menu item will be like

<item android:id="@+id/cart"
    app:actionLayout="@layout/actionbar_cart"
    android:title="@string/action_cart"
    app:showAsAction="always"
 />