How to allow the user to select a text range in a TextView (Similar to EditText)

Question

I\'ve got a TextView that I would like to allow the user to select a range of text from within it. The TextView takes up the entire width and heigh

Answer 1

You could display the text in a WebView and enable text selection. If you want to only use a textview/edittext, here is an answer that might help you and here is information on the Spannable class that might help you accomplish what you want.

Answer 2

Actually, you do not have to develop this feature by yourself. You just need to use EditText instead TextView, while you set the android:editable of EditText to false. My idea is the same as sandy's.

My code is here, hope it may help you:

https://stackoverflow.com/a/11026292/966405

Answer 3

After long internet surfing to find a solution, i prefered create my own class

https://github.com/orionsource/SelectableTextViewer

Goal features:

1. Easy to use - only one class
2. Support for text and Html.fromHtml
3. Can be in ScrollView with correct touches
4. Cursors can be redefined
5. Color of selection can be redefined

Answer 4

Here is an idea.. Add an EditText with a TextView background, Here is an example

<EditText 
android:text=" This is not an editable EditText" 
android:id="@+id/EditText01" 
android:layout_width="wrap_content" 
android:textColor = "@android:color/white"
android:editable = "false"
android:cursorVisible="false"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:background = "@android:drawable/dark_header">
</EditText>

add this to your xml in the place of TextView

Answer 5

You can enable the TextView's Spannable storage. See Highlight Text in TextView or WebView for an example.

See also:

http://developer.android.com/reference/android/text/Spanned.html