Selecting text in a WebView?

Question

The browser does this by calling public void emulateShiftHeld() method on the WebView which is hidden in the SDK.
Any other options?

Answer 1

This chunk of code does the exact same thing as emulateshiftheld(). It allows the user to select text. Then automatically copies it to the clipboard.

        KeyEvent shiftPressEvent = new KeyEvent(0,0,
                 KeyEvent.ACTION_DOWN,KeyEvent.KEYCODE_SHIFT_LEFT,0,0);
            shiftPressEvent.dispatch(portal);

Answer 2

From the class that extends WebView:

public void selectAndCopyText() {
    try {
        Method m = WebView.class.getMethod("emulateShiftHeld", null);
        m.invoke(this, null);
    } catch (Exception e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
        // fallback
        KeyEvent shiftPressEvent = new KeyEvent(0,0,
             KeyEvent.ACTION_DOWN,KeyEvent.KEYCODE_SHIFT_LEFT,0,0);
        shiftPressEvent.dispatch(this);
    }
}

And then you have to use ClipboardManager to watch for new text.

Works on Android 1.5 - 2.3. emulateShiftHeld() made public since 2.2.