Custom TextView in android with different color words

Question

Is it possible to have a textview to have different color for every word? Or even every letter? I tried extending textview and creating it but howe

Answer 1

Yes, you can do this with Spannable and SpannableStringBuilder. See Is there any example about Spanned and Spannable text for one example.

For the various ways to format text (background color, foreground color, clickable, etc.), see CharacterStyle.

Answer 2

The SpannableString class allows you to easily format certain pieces (spans) of a string one way and other pieces another by applying extensions of CharacterStyle (i.e. ForegroundColorSpan) via the setSpan method.

You can try This:

@Override
public void onCreate(Bundle icicle) {
    super.onCreate(icicle);
    setContentView(R.layout.main);
    richTextView = (TextView)findViewById(R.id.rich_text);

    // this is the text we'll be operating on
    SpannableString text = new SpannableString("Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet");

    // make "Lorem" (characters 0 to 5) red
    text.setSpan(new ForegroundColorSpan(Color.RED), 0, 5, 0);

    // make "ipsum" (characters 6 to 11) one and a half time bigger than the textbox
    text.setSpan(new RelativeSizeSpan(1.5f), 6, 11, 0);

    // make "dolor" (characters 12 to 17) display a toast message when touched
    final Context context = this;
    ClickableSpan clickableSpan = new ClickableSpan() {
        @Override
        public void onClick(View view) {
            Toast.makeText(context, "dolor", Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show();
        }
    };
    text.setSpan(clickableSpan, 12, 17, 0);

    // make "sit" (characters 18 to 21) struck through
    text.setSpan(new StrikethroughSpan(), 18, 21, 0);

    // make "amet" (characters 22 to 26) twice as big, green and a link to this site.
    // it's important to set the color after the URLSpan or the standard
    // link color will override it.
    text.setSpan(new RelativeSizeSpan(2f), 22, 26, 0);
    text.setSpan(new URLSpan("http://www.chrisumbel.com"), 22, 26, 0);
    text.setSpan(new ForegroundColorSpan(Color.GREEN), 22, 26, 0);

    // make our ClickableSpans and URLSpans work
    richTextView.setMovementMethod(LinkMovementMethod.getInstance());

    // shove our styled text into the TextView        
    richTextView.setText(text, BufferType.SPANNABLE);
}

The result will look like this:

For more detail see Chris Umbel blog.

Answer 3

Use android.text.Spannable

final SpannableStringBuilder str = new SpannableStringBuilder(text);
str.setSpan(
    new ForegroundColorSpan(Color.BLUE), 
    wordStart, 
    wordEnd, 
    SpannableStringBuilder.SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE
);
myTextView.setText(str);

EDIT: To make all "Java" green

final Pattern p = Pattern.compile("Java");
final Matcher matcher = p.matcher(text);

final SpannableStringBuilder spannable = new SpannableStringBuilder(text);
final ForegroundColorSpan span = new ForegroundColorSpan(Color.GREEN);
while (matcher.find()) {
    spannable.setSpan(
        span, matcher.start(), matcher.end(), Spanned.SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE
    );
}
myTextView.setText(spannable);