Android Edittext Rich Text Formatting

Question 1

Here are two awesome libraries which helped me out. Both of them are implementation of WYSIWYG.

Android RTEditor: https://github.com/1gravity/Android-RTEditor

RichEditor-Android: https://github.com/wasabeef/richeditor-android

Their implementation code is also provided.

Question 2

No there is no library for this but you can do that with using following classes

1.HTML

2.SPANNABLE

3.ForegroundSpan

4.BackgroundSpan

5.AbsoluteSpan

1.http://developer.android.com/reference/android/text/Html.html

using this you can embedd direct html tag with android like bold ,itlic,underlince etc

2.http://developer.android.com/reference/android/text/Spannable.html (SpannableString ,SpannableStringBuilder, etc)

EDIT

for edit text bold,italic etc.. see some examples on below link

http://www.androidengineer.com/2010/08/easy-method-for-formatting-android.html

https://blog.stylingandroid.com/introduction-to-spans/

Question 3

Here is the steps to convert an EditText into RichText

1) Create a RichTextEditor class as shown below, this example has support for bold/unbold, you can add more as needed

import android.app.Activity;
import android.graphics.Color;
import android.graphics.drawable.Drawable;
import android.text.Editable;
import android.text.Selection;
import android.text.Spannable;
import android.text.TextWatcher;
import android.text.style.StyleSpan;
import android.view.View;
import android.widget.AdapterView;
import android.widget.EditText;
import android.widget.ImageButton;

import com.loa.learnandcheck.R;
import com.loa.learnandcheck.util.ResourceHelper;

public class RichTextEditor implements ImageButton.OnClickListener, TextWatcher {
    private boolean textBold;
    private ImageButton buttonBold;
    private EditText editText;
    private Activity parent;
    private int styleStart = 0;

    public RichTextEditor(Activity parent, EditText editText){
        try {
            this.parent = parent;
            this.editText = editText;
            init();
        }catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }

    public void init(){
        try {
            buttonBold = (ImageButton)parent.findViewById(R.id.text_control_text_bold);
            if(buttonBold!=null) {
                buttonBold.setOnClickListener(this);
            }
            editText.addTextChangedListener(this);
        }catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }

    public Activity getParent() {
        return parent;
    }

    public void setParent(Activity parent) {
        this.parent = parent;
    }

    public void updateBackground(boolean itemSelected, ImageButton button) {
        try {
            if(itemSelected) {
                button.setBackgroundColor(ResourceHelper.getThemeColor(parent,R.color.colorGray, Color.GRAY));
            } else {
                button.setBackgroundColor(ResourceHelper.getThemeColor(parent,R.color.colorWhite, Color.WHITE));
            }
        } catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }

    public void handleBoldButtonClick() {
        try {
            textBold = !textBold;
            updateBackground(textBold,buttonBold);
            int selectionStart = editText.getSelectionStart();
            int selectionEnd = editText.getSelectionEnd();
            if (selectionStart > selectionEnd){
                int temp = selectionEnd;
                selectionEnd = selectionStart;
                selectionStart = temp;
            }
            if (selectionEnd > selectionStart) {
                Spannable str = editText.getText();
                StyleSpan[] ss = str.getSpans(selectionStart, selectionEnd, StyleSpan.class);
                boolean exists = false;
                for (int i = 0; i < ss.length; i++) {
                    if (ss[i].getStyle() == android.graphics.Typeface.BOLD){
                        str.removeSpan(ss[i]);
                        exists = true;
                    }
                }
                if (!exists){
                    str.setSpan(new StyleSpan(android.graphics.Typeface.BOLD), selectionStart, selectionEnd, Spannable.SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE);
                }
            }
        } catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }

    public void handleFormat(Editable s, int position, int format) {
        try {
            StyleSpan[] ss = s.getSpans(styleStart, position, StyleSpan.class);
            for (int i = 0; i < ss.length; i++) {
                if (ss[i].getStyle() == format){
                    s.removeSpan(ss[i]);
                }
            }
            s.setSpan(new StyleSpan(format), styleStart, position, Spannable.SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE);
        } catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }

    @Override
    public void onClick(View view) {
        try {
            switch (view.getId()) {
                case R.id.text_control_text_bold:
                    handleBoldButtonClick();
                    break;
                //more formats to be handled as needed here...
                default:
            }
        } catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
    public void afterTextChanged(Editable s) {
        int position = Selection.getSelectionStart(editText.getText());
        //handle bold
        if (textBold){
            handleFormat(s, position, android.graphics.Typeface.BOLD);
        }
        //more formats to be handled as needed here...
    }
    public void beforeTextChanged(CharSequence s, int start, int count, int after) {
        styleStart = start;
    }
    public void onTextChanged(CharSequence s, int start, int before, int count) {
        //unused
    }

}

2) Create the following ResourceHelper class

public class ResourceHelper {
    /**
     * Get a color value from a theme attribute.
     * @param context used for getting the color.
     * @param attribute theme attribute.
     * @param defaultColor default to use.
     * @return color value
     */
    public static int getThemeColor(Context context, int attribute, int defaultColor) {
        int themeColor = 0;
        String packageName = context.getPackageName();
        try {
            Context packageContext = context.createPackageContext(packageName, 0);
            ApplicationInfo applicationInfo =
                context.getPackageManager().getApplicationInfo(packageName, 0);
            packageContext.setTheme(applicationInfo.theme);
            Resources.Theme theme = packageContext.getTheme();
            TypedArray ta = theme.obtainStyledAttributes(new int[] {attribute});
            themeColor = ta.getColor(0, defaultColor);
            ta.recycle();
        } catch (PackageManager.NameNotFoundException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
        return themeColor;
    }
}

3) Create layout with an edittext and control buttons(ImageButtons) as shown below

   <EditText
                android:id="@+id/text_content"
                android:layout_width="0dp"
                android:layout_height="wrap_content"
                android:layout_weight="5"
                android:inputType="textMultiLine"
                android:lines="5"
                android:scrollbars="vertical"
                android:background="@color/colorWhite"

                android:hint="@string/text_content" />


<ImageButton
                            android:id="@+id/text_control_text_bold"
                            android:layout_width="40dp"
                            android:layout_height="40dp"
                            android:background="@color/colorWhite"
                            android:src="@drawable/ic_action_text_bold"/>

4) In Activity, load the edittext and create RichTextEditor instance as show below

inputText = (EditText)findViewById(R.id.text_content) ;
new RichTextEditor(this,inputText);