How do I use InputFilter to limit characters in an

Question

I want to restrict the chars to 0-9, a-z, A-Z and spacebar only. Setting inputtype I can limit to digits but I cannot figure out the ways of Inputfilter looking through the docs.

Answer 1

If you subclass InputFilter you can create your own InputFilter that would filter out any non-alpha-numeric characters.

The InputFilter Interface has one method, filter(CharSequence source, int start, int end, Spanned dest, int dstart, int dend), and it provides you with all the information you need to know about which characters were entered into the EditText it is assigned to.

Once you have created your own InputFilter, you can assign it to the EditText by calling setFilters(...).

http://developer.android.com/reference/android/text/InputFilter.html#filter(java.lang.CharSequence, int, int, android.text.Spanned, int, int)

Answer 2

to prevent words in edittext. create a class that u could use anytime.

public class Wordfilter implements InputFilter
{
    @Override
    public CharSequence filter(CharSequence source, int start, int end,Spanned dest, int dstart, int dend) {
        // TODO Auto-generated method stub
        boolean append = false;
        String text = source.toString().substring(start, end);
        StringBuilder str = new StringBuilder(dest.toString());
        if(dstart == str.length())
        {
            append = true;
            str.append(text);
        }
        else
            str.replace(dstart, dend, text);
        if(str.toString().contains("aaaaaaaaaaaa/*the word here*/aaaaaaaa"))
        {
            if(append==true)
                return "";
            else
                return dest.subSequence(dstart, dend);
        }
        return null;
    }
}

Answer 3

To avoid Special Characters in input type

public static InputFilter filter = new InputFilter() {
    @Override
    public CharSequence filter(CharSequence source, int start, int end, Spanned dest, int dstart, int dend) {
        String blockCharacterSet = "~#^|$%*!@/()-'\":;,?{}=!$^';,?×÷<>{}€£¥₩%~`¤♡♥_|《》¡¿°•○●□■◇◆♧♣▲▼▶◀↑↓←→☆★▪:-);-):-D:-(:'(:O 1234567890";
        if (source != null && blockCharacterSet.contains(("" + source))) {
            return "";
        }
        return null;
    }
};

You can set filter to your edit text like below

edtText.setFilters(new InputFilter[] { filter });

Answer 4

Use this its work 100% your need and very simple.

<EditText
android:inputType="textFilter"
android:digits="@string/myAlphaNumeric" />

In strings.xml

<string name="myAlphaNumeric">abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ0123456789</string>

Answer 5

This is an old thread, but the purposed solutions all have issues (depending on device / Android version / Keyboard).

DIFFERENT APPROACH

So eventually I went with a different approach, instead of using the InputFilter problematic implementation, I am using TextWatcher and the TextChangedListener of the EditText.

FULL CODE (EXAMPLE)

editText.addTextChangedListener(new TextWatcher() {

    @Override
    public void afterTextChanged(Editable editable) {
        super.afterTextChanged(editable);

        String originalText = editable.toString();
        int originalTextLength = originalText.length();
        int currentSelection = editText.getSelectionStart();

        // Create the filtered text
        StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
        boolean hasChanged = false;
        for (int i = 0; i < originalTextLength; i++) {
            char currentChar = originalText.charAt(i);
            if (isAllowed(currentChar)) {
                sb.append(currentChar);
            } else {
                hasChanged = true;
                if (currentSelection >= i) {
                    currentSelection--;
                }
            }
        }

        // If we filtered something, update the text and the cursor location
        if (hasChanged) {
            String newText = sb.toString();
            editText.setText(newText);
            editText.setSelection(currentSelection);
        }
    }

    private boolean isAllowed(char c) {
        // TODO: Add the filter logic here
        return Character.isLetter(c) || Character.isSpaceChar(c);
    }
    @Override
    public void beforeTextChanged(CharSequence s, int start, int count, int after) {
        // Do Nothing
    }

    @Override
    onTextChanged(CharSequence s, int start, int before, int count) {
        // Do Nothing
    }
});

The reason InputFilter is not a good solution in Android is since it depends on the keyboard implementation. The Keyboard input is being filtered before the input is passed to the EditText. But, because some keyboards have different implementations for the InputFilter.filter() invocation, this is problematic.

On the other hand TextWatcher does not care about the keyboard implementation, it allows us to create a simple solution and be sure it will work on all devices.

Answer 6

It is possible to use setOnKeyListener. In this method, we can customize the input edittext !