EditText maxLines not working - user can still inp

Question

<EditText 
    android:id="@+id/editText2" 
    android:layout_height="wrap_content" 
    android:layout_width="fill_parent" 
    android:maxLines="5" 
    android:lines="5">
</EditText>

User can input more than 5 lines, by pressing enter/next row key. How can I limit user input to fixed amount of rows with EditText?

Answer 1

Try using the following combination of attributes of the EditText inside the xml file:

android:singleLine="true"
android:maxLength="22"

Answer 2

<EditText
    android:id="@+id/edit_text"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:inputType="text"
    android:maxLines="1" 
/>

You just need to make sure you have the attribute "inputType" set. It doesn't work without this line.

android:inputType="text"

Answer 3

@Cedekasem you are right, there isn't a built in "row limiter". But I did built one my self, so if anyone is interested the code is below. Cheers.

et.setOnKeyListener(new View.OnKeyListener() {

        @Override
        public boolean onKey(View v, int keyCode, KeyEvent event) {

            // if enter is pressed start calculating
            if (keyCode == KeyEvent.KEYCODE_ENTER
                    && event.getAction() == KeyEvent.ACTION_UP) {

                // get EditText text
                String text = ((EditText) v).getText().toString();

                // find how many rows it cointains
                int editTextRowCount = text.split("\\n").length;

                // user has input more than limited - lets do something
                // about that
                if (editTextRowCount >= 7) {

                    // find the last break
                    int lastBreakIndex = text.lastIndexOf("\n");

                    // compose new text
                    String newText = text.substring(0, lastBreakIndex);

                    // add new text - delete old one and append new one
                    // (append because I want the cursor to be at the end)
                    ((EditText) v).setText("");
                    ((EditText) v).append(newText);

                }
            }

            return false;
        }
});

Answer 4

I did something like you guys have been looking for. Here's my LimitedEditText class.

Features:

• you can limit lines count in your LimitedEditText component
• you can limit characters count in your LimitedEditText component
• if you exceed the limit of characters or lines somewhere in the middle of text, cursor
  won't bring you to the end - it will stay where have you been.

Im turning off listener, because every call of setText() method would recursively call these 3 callback methods in case when user exceeded characters or lines limit.

Code:

import android.content.Context;
import android.text.Editable;
import android.text.TextWatcher;
import android.util.AttributeSet;
import android.util.Log;
import android.widget.EditText;
import android.widget.Toast;

/**
* EditText subclass created to enforce limit of the lines number in editable
* text field
*/
public class LimitedEditText extends EditText {

/**
 * Max lines to be present in editable text field
 */
private int maxLines = 1;

/**
 * Max characters to be present in editable text field
 */
private int maxCharacters = 50;

/**
 * application context;
 */
private Context context;

public int getMaxCharacters() {
    return maxCharacters;
}

public void setMaxCharacters(int maxCharacters) {
    this.maxCharacters = maxCharacters;
}

@Override
public int getMaxLines() {
    return maxLines;
}

@Override
public void setMaxLines(int maxLines) {
    this.maxLines = maxLines;
}

public LimitedEditText(Context context, AttributeSet attrs, int defStyle) {
    super(context, attrs, defStyle);
    this.context = context;
}

public LimitedEditText(Context context, AttributeSet attrs) {
    super(context, attrs);
    this.context = context;
}

public LimitedEditText(Context context) {
    super(context);
    this.context = context;
}

@Override
protected void onFinishInflate() {
    super.onFinishInflate();

    TextWatcher watcher = new TextWatcher() {

        private String text;
        private int beforeCursorPosition = 0;

        @Override
        public void onTextChanged(CharSequence s, int start, int before,
                int count) {                
            //TODO sth
        }

        @Override
        public void beforeTextChanged(CharSequence s, int start, int count,
                int after) {
            text = s.toString();
            beforeCursorPosition = start;
        }

        @Override
        public void afterTextChanged(Editable s) {

            /* turning off listener */
            removeTextChangedListener(this);

            /* handling lines limit exceed */
            if (LimitedEditText.this.getLineCount() > maxLines) {
                LimitedEditText.this.setText(text);
                LimitedEditText.this.setSelection(beforeCursorPosition);
            }

            /* handling character limit exceed */
            if (s.toString().length() > maxCharacters) {
                LimitedEditText.this.setText(text);
                LimitedEditText.this.setSelection(beforeCursorPosition);
                Toast.makeText(context, "text too long", Toast.LENGTH_SHORT)
                        .show();
            }

            /* turning on listener */
            addTextChangedListener(this);

        }
    };

    this.addTextChangedListener(watcher);
}

}

Answer 5

I've made simpler solution for this :D

// set listeners
    txtSpecialRequests.addTextChangedListener(new TextWatcher() {
        @Override
        public void beforeTextChanged(CharSequence s, int start, int count, int after) {
            lastSpecialRequestsCursorPosition = txtSpecialRequests.getSelectionStart();
        }

        @Override
        public void onTextChanged(CharSequence s, int start, int before, int count) {

        }

        @Override
        public void afterTextChanged(Editable s) {
            txtSpecialRequests.removeTextChangedListener(this);

            if (txtSpecialRequests.getLineCount() > 3) {
                txtSpecialRequests.setText(specialRequests);
                txtSpecialRequests.setSelection(lastSpecialRequestsCursorPosition);
            }
            else
                specialRequests = txtSpecialRequests.getText().toString();

            txtSpecialRequests.addTextChangedListener(this);
        }
    });

You can change the value of 3 in txtSpecialRequests.getLineCount() > 3 to your needs.

Answer 6

getLineCount() is one option; if you want non-zero values there make sure your view is measured. For soft keyboard onKeyListener won't work so you have to add addTextChangedListener() that will track text changes as you type. As soon as you get enough lines inside its call backs do whatever you want to limit it: delete characters with getText(), setText() or something more fancy. You can even limit the number of characters using a filter.

Another option is to monitor size of the text with getLineBounds(). This will interact with text gravity/paddign so be careful.