SpannableString in android

Shubham Agarwal

14 December 2016

The SpannableString in android is a powerful way to beautify and manipulate different part of a simple text.

What is SpannableString?

This is the class for text whose content is immutable but to which markup objects can be attached and detached.

This implies that for a immutable content/string , we can provide different markup objects like URLSpan, ForegroundColorSpan, RelativeSizeSpan, ImageSpan, BackgroundColorSpan , ClickableSpan etc.

How to manipulate only a part of string by using SpannableString?

It is same as how it is done in the web

1. Creating a ClickableSpan

  ClickableSpan clickableSpan = new ClickableSpan() {
                    @Override
                    public void onClick(View textView) {
                        perfomClickAction();
                    }

                    @Override
                    public void updateDrawState(TextPaint textPaint) {
                        super.updateDrawState(textPaint);
                    }
                };

ClickableSpan clickableSpan = new ClickableSpan() {

@Override

public void onClick(View textView) {

perfomClickAction();

}

@Override

public void updateDrawState(TextPaint textPaint) {

super.updateDrawState(textPaint);

}

};

2. Creating a SpannableString

 SpannableString spannableString = new SpannableString("YOUR STRING WITH CLICK");
 spannableString.setSpan(clickableSpan, starting position of span, ending position of span,
Spanned.SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE);

SpannableString spannableString = new SpannableString("YOUR STRING WITH CLICK");

spannableString.setSpan(clickableSpan, starting position of span, ending position of span,

Spanned.SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE);

This will set the click action to a particular portion of the text.

3. Setting SpannableString to TextView

 resendSmsTV = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.resend_sms);    
resendSmsTV.setText(spannableString);

1 2	resendSmsTV = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.resend_sms); resendSmsTV.setText(spannableString);