SpannableStringBuilder to create String with multiple fonts/text sizes etc Example?

Question

I need to create a String placed in a TextView that will display a string like this:

First Part Not Bold BOLD rest not bold

Answer 1

Why would you use SpannableStringBuilder when you can use SpannableBuilder?? (https://gist.github.com/qtyq/90f9b4894069a8b3676c)

SpannableString ss = SpannableBuilder.init("First Part Not Bold BOLD rest not bold")
                                     .makeBold("BOLD")
                                     .create()

Answer 2

Use HTML code in TextView using the Html class:

Spanned styledText = Html.fromHtml("First Part Not Bold <b>BOLD</b> rest not bold");
textView.setText(styledText);

Answer 3

From API 21 SpannableStringBuilder includes a simple method to do this. Here is a solution example:

SpannableStringBuilder builder= new SpannableStringBuilder();
StyleSpan boldSpan = new StyleSpan(android.graphics.Typeface.BOLD);
builder.append("First Part Not Bold ")
              .append("BOLD ", boldSpan, Spanned.SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE)
              .append("rest not bold");

Since it is a good chance you do not support API 21 only you can duplicate the code from that method:

public SpannableStringBuilder append(CharSequence text, Object what, int flags) {
        int start = length();
        append(text);
        setSpan(what, start, length(), flags);
        return this;
}

Answer 4

This code should set to bold everything that comes inside the html bold tag. And it also deletes the tag so only the content inside is displayed.

        SpannableStringBuilder sb = new SpannableStringBuilder("this is <b>bold</b> and this is <b>bold too</b>  and this is <b>bold too, again</b>.");

        Pattern p = Pattern.compile("<b>.*?</b>", Pattern.CASE_INSENSITIVE);            
        boolean stop = false;
        while (!stop)
        {
            Matcher m = p.matcher(sb.toString());
            if (m.find()) {
                sb.setSpan(new StyleSpan(android.graphics.Typeface.BOLD), m.start(), m.end(), Spannable.SPAN_INCLUSIVE_INCLUSIVE);
                sb.delete(m.end()-4, m.end());
                sb.delete(m.start(), m.start() + 3);
            }
            else
                stop = true;
        }

This code can also be adapted for other html style tags, such as Superscript (sup tag), etc.

        SpannableStringBuilder sb = new SpannableStringBuilder("text has <sup>superscript</sup> tag");

        Pattern p = Pattern.compile("<sup>.*?</sup>", Pattern.CASE_INSENSITIVE);            
        boolean stop = false;
        while (!stop)
        {
            Matcher m = p.matcher(sb.toString());
            if (m.find()) {
                sb.setSpan(new SuperscriptSpan(), m.start(), m.end(), Spannable.SPAN_INCLUSIVE_INCLUSIVE);
                sb.delete(m.end()-6, m.end());
                sb.delete(m.start(), m.start() + 5);
            }
            else
                stop = true;
        }

To set the color, just use the ForegroundColorSpan with setSpan.

sb.setSpan(new ForegroundColorSpan(Color.rgb(255, 0, 0)), m.start(), m.end(), Spannable.SPAN_INCLUSIVE_INCLUSIVE);

Hope it helps.

Answer 5

If you are using Kotlin you can do the following using the android-ktx library

val s = SpannableStringBuilder()
        .append("First Part Not Bold ")
        .bold { append("BOLD") } 
        .append("Rest not bold")

The bold is an extension function on SpannableStringBuilder. You can see the documentation here for a list of operations you can use.

Another example:

val s = SpannableStringBuilder()
            .color(green, { append("Green text ") })
            .append("Normal text ")
            .scale(0.5, { append("Text at half size " })
            .backgroundColor(green, { append("Background green") })

Where green is a resolved RGB color.

It is even possible to nest spans so you end up with an embedded DSL:

bold { underline { italic { append("Bold and underlined") } } }

You will need the following in your app module level build.gradle for it to work:

repositories {
    google()
}

dependencies {
    implementation "androidx.core:core-ktx:1.2.0"
}

Answer 6

The accepted answer is fine (and I upvoted it), but it fails to use the SpannableStringBuilder as the submitter requested. As I had a case where the Builder made the most sense, here is the code for that (with a bonus use of also changing the color of the text if that is helpful to others). Note that you could also provide the initial string to the SpannableStringBuilder constructor, but I set it here to use "append" to be clear that you can append a lot before your desired "bold" text and then just record the start as shown. I would suspect that this is also faster code than the accepted answer.

SpannableStringBuilder longDescription = new SpannableStringBuilder();
longDescription.append("First Part Not Bold ");
int start = longDescription.length();
longDescription.append("BOLD");
longDescription.setSpan(new ForegroundColorSpan(0xFFCC5500), start, longDescription.length(), Spannable.SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE);
longDescription.setSpan(new StyleSpan(android.graphics.Typeface.BOLD), start, longDescription.length(), Spannable.SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE);
longDescription.append(" rest not bold");