How to allow the user to select a text range in a

Question

I've got a TextView that I would like to allow the user to select a range of text from within it. The TextView takes up the entire width and height of the device (minus some padding and a title at the top). In an EditText if you long-click you get a selection overlay that allows you to set your selection left and right bounds. I'd like this functionality in a TextView. I've read that in API level 9 (2.3) (http://developer.android.com/sdk/android-2.3.html) there are new text selection controls, but I'm having difficulty implementing this. I'm doing this right now:

eic = new InputConnection( bookTextView );
eic.beginBatchEdit();

But it doesn't do anything noticable. Does anyone know how to use InputConnection correctly? Thanks.

Edit: I don't necessarily need to use what I was attempting above. I ultimately want to use either a TextView or an EditText which looks and feels like a TextView and be able to select text using a dragging cursor. Then I would like to manipulate the selected text with various context menu options (or a menu that pops up above the selected text).

Answer 1

You can enable the TextView's Spannable storage. See Highlight Text in TextView or WebView for an example.

See also:

http://developer.android.com/reference/android/text/Spanned.html

Answer 2

You could display the text in a WebView and enable text selection. If you want to only use a textview/edittext, here is an answer that might help you and here is information on the Spannable class that might help you accomplish what you want.

Answer 3

Actually, you do not have to develop this feature by yourself. You just need to use EditText instead TextView, while you set the android:editable of EditText to false. My idea is the same as sandy's.

My code is here, hope it may help you:

https://stackoverflow.com/a/11026292/966405

Answer 4

Here is an idea.. Add an EditText with a TextView background, Here is an example

<EditText 
android:text=" This is not an editable EditText" 
android:id="@+id/EditText01" 
android:layout_width="wrap_content" 
android:textColor = "@android:color/white"
android:editable = "false"
android:cursorVisible="false"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:background = "@android:drawable/dark_header">
</EditText>

add this to your xml in the place of TextView

Answer 5

After long internet surfing to find a solution, i prefered create my own class

https://github.com/orionsource/SelectableTextViewer

Goal features:

1. Easy to use - only one class
2. Support for text and Html.fromHtml
3. Can be in ScrollView with correct touches
4. Cursors can be redefined
5. Color of selection can be redefined