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Bold Text in TextView does not work with combination of Spanned and String

I have this code
TextView text1 = (TextView) view.findViewById(R.layout.myLayout);
Spanned myBold = (Html.fromHtml("<b>Test<b>", Html.FROM_HTML_MODE_LEGACY));
If I do
text1.setText(myBold);
Then myBold is in bold,which is ok. But when I want to add a string more, like
text1.setText(myBold+"bla");
Then the whole TextView is not bold anymore. Why does the new String "bla" affect this?
Thanks.

Why does the new String "bla" affect this?
Because what you are really doing is:
text1.setText(myBold.toString() + "bla");
A String has no style information. A Spanned object does.
Use TextUtils.concat() instead:
text1.setText(TextUtils.concat(myBold, "bla"));

A better choice would be to use a Bold StyleSpan. In the next sample only the "hello" world will be set to bold by using such technique:
Java:
final SpannableString caption = new SpannableString("hello world");
// Set to bold from index 0 to the length of 'hello'
caption.setSpan(new StyleSpan(Typeface.BOLD), 0, "hello".length(), Spannable.SPAN_INCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE);
yourTextView.setText(caption);
Kotlin:
yourTextView.text = SpannableString("hello world").apply {
// Set to bold from index 0 to the length of 'hello'
setSpan(StyleSpan(Typeface.BOLD), 0, "hello".length, Spannable.SPAN_INCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE))
}
This would be a more optimal solution rather than using the Html.fromHtml technicque, as it doesn't have to go through the overhead of parsing/interpreting the HTML tags.
In addition, it allows you to combine more styles, sizes, etc, in the same SpannableString.

Android Kotlin creating SpannableString from another SpannableString loses spans

I'm working on creating my own MarkdownTextView.
In this particular instance, I'm sifting through a body of text parsing out italic tags example:
Here is text, and *here is italic text*, and maybe *more* italic text
I have a regex function that does the sifting for me:
(\*[^*])(.*?)([^*]\*)
Below is the code that I am using to replace all of the italic snippets:
val commentBody = "Here is text, and *here is italic text*, and maybe *more* italic text"
val check = "(\*[^*])(.*?)([^*]\*)".toRegex()
val newSpan = SpannableString(commentBody.replace(check, { result ->
val innerSpan = SpannableString(result.value.substring(1, result.value.length - 1))
innerSpan.setSpan(StyleSpan(Typeface.ITALIC), 0, innerSpan.length, spanFlag)
return#replace innerSpan
}))
My regex is working properly, and
Here is text, and *here is italic text*, and maybe *more* italic text
is correctly converted to show
Here is text, and here is italic text, and maybe more italic text
But nothing is italicized. I debugged this, and it confirms my fear that when setting the italics span inside of that transform, and using that to setup my new spannable string, that I'm losing all of those spans.
Any ideas?

In case anyone is interested this is my answer:
val commentBody = "Here is text, and *here is italic text*, and maybe *more* italic text"
val check = "(\\*[^*])(.*?)([^*]\\*)".toRegex()
val spannableStringBuilder = SpannableStringBuilder(commentBody.replace("*", ""))
check.findAll(commentBody).map { it.value.substring(1, it.value.length - 1) }.forEach {
val start = spannableStringBuilder.indexOf(it)
val end = start + it.length
spannableStringBuilder.setSpan(StyleSpan(Typeface.ITALIC), 0, innerSpan.length, spanFlag)
}
return spannableStringBuilder

If you have a look at String.replace, you'll find, that the SpannableString you return is actually used as a CharSequence for transform: (MatchResult) -> CharSequence.
Also you're creating the outer SpannableString from a pure String only.
Thus you never had the information available. You could have a look into SpannableStringBuilder and use it with a different approach like using a tokenizer or a custom Markdown span which removes the markup syntax on the fly.

Get Spannable String from EditText

I have set a SpannableString to an EditText, now I want to get this text from the EditText and get its markup information. I tried like this:
SpannableStringBuilder spanStr = (SpannableStringBuilder) et.getText();
int boldIndex = spanStr.getSpanStart(new StyleSpan(Typeface.BOLD));
int italicIndex = spanStr.getSpanStart(new StyleSpan(Typeface.ITALIC));
But it gives index -1 for both bold and italic, although it is showing text with italic and bold.
Please help.

From the code you've posted, you're passing new spans to spanStr and asking it to find them. You'll need to have a reference to the instances of those spans that are actually applied. If that's not feasible or you don't want to track spans directly, you can simply call
getSpans to get all the spans applied. You can then filter that array for what you want.
If you don't care about the spans in particular, you can also just call Html.toHtml(spanStr) to get an HTML tagged version.
edit: to add code example
This will grab all applied StyleSpans which is what you want.
/* From the Android docs on StyleSpan: "Describes a style in a span.
* Note that styles are cumulative -- both bold and italic are set in
* separate spans, or if the base is bold and a span calls for italic,
* you get bold italic. You can't turn off a style from the base style."*/
StyleSpan[] mSpans = et.getText().getSpans(0, et.length(), StyleSpan.class);
Here's a link to the StyleSpan docs.
To pick out the spans you want if you have various spans mixed in to a collection/array, you can use instanceof to figure out what type of spans you've got. This snippet will check if a particular span mSpan is an instance of StyleSpan and then print its start/end indices and flags. The flags are constants that describe how the span ends behave such as: Do they include and apply styling to the text at the start/end indices or only to text input at an index inside the start/end range).
if (mSpan instanceof StyleSpan) {
int start = et.getSpanStart(mSpan);
int end = et.getSpanEnd(mSpan);
int flag = et.getSpanFlags(mSpan);
Log.i("SpannableString Spans", "Found StyleSpan at:\n" +
"Start: " + start +
"\n End: " + end +
"\n Flag(s): " + flag);
}

Any way to set span directly to spanable text?

This may be a blunder,But I need to know... :)
Iam develeoping an android application,In in I want to display two type face in a single textview and found this One very useful,A custom typeface span that extends typeface span,
As per my understanding , we are creating a spannable as follows using two words
String firstWord = "first ";
String secondWord = "second";
// Create a new spannable with the two strings
Spannable spannable = new SpannableString(firstWord+secondWord);
then sets two type face to that words using our custom span like this
// Set the custom typeface to span over a section of the spannable object
spannable.setSpan( new CustomTypefaceSpan("sans-serif",CUSTOM_TYPEFACE), 0,
firstWord.length(), Spannable.SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE);
spannable.setSpan( new CustomTypefaceSpan("sans-serif",SECOND_CUSTOM_TYPEFACE), rstWord.length(), secondWord.length(), Spannable.SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE);
Now my question, I have a large amount of text so If i am able to put the spans directly in my text its will be a more easy for us ,is that possible to put spans directly to the text like we put <b>bold </b> as my need is to use my custom typeface span like <typeface1> sample </typeface1> <typeface2> Doc </typeface2>.
WHAT I NEED IS, DIRECTLY APPLY THE CHANGE TO TEXT WHAT THE SET SPAN DO TO THE TEXT
Is that possible, if possible what i need to write as span in my text,How can I achieve this.. or am i compleatly wrong ?
Thank you for all

Very late answer but what you asked for is pretty easy.
For instance, lets say we want to change everything between quotation marks into italic font.
String s = "\"Hello my name is Edward\" Hola, my nombre es Edward";
Pattern p = Pattern.compile("\"([^\"]*)\"");
Matcher m = p.matcher(text);
Spannable spannable = new SpannableString(s);
while (m.find()) {
int textLocation = text.indexOf(m.group(1));
// Set the custom typeface to span over a section of the spannable object
spannable.setSpan( new CustomTypefaceSpan("sans-serif",my_italic_font),
textLocation-1, textLocation + m.group(1).length(),spannable.SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE);
// Set the text of a textView with the spannable object
TextView textbox = (TextView) v.findViewById(R.id.cardtextbox);
}
textbox.setText( spannable );
Result of s would be
"Hello my name is Edward" Hola, my nombre es Edward
Now instead of quotation marks you would use a regex pattern for tags like <b>bold </b>;
And you could also remove the tags afterwards with a simple .replace();

How to make part of the text Bold in android at runtime?

A ListView in my application has many string elements like name, experience, date of joining, etc. I just want to make name bold. All the string elements will be in a single TextView.
my XML:
<ImageView
android:id="#+id/logo"
android:layout_width="55dp"
android:layout_height="55dp"
android:layout_marginLeft="5dp"
android:layout_marginRight="5dp"
android:layout_marginTop="15dp" >
</ImageView>
<TextView
android:id="#+id/label"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_toRightOf="#id/logo"
android:padding="5dp"
android:textSize="12dp" >
</TextView>
My code to set the TextView of the ListView item:
holder.text.setText(name + "\n" + expirience + " " + dateOfJoininf);

Let's say you have a TextView called etx. You would then use the following code:
final SpannableStringBuilder sb = new SpannableStringBuilder("HELLOO");
final StyleSpan bss = new StyleSpan(android.graphics.Typeface.BOLD); // Span to make text bold
final StyleSpan iss = new StyleSpan(android.graphics.Typeface.ITALIC); //Span to make text italic
sb.setSpan(bss, 0, 4, Spannable.SPAN_INCLUSIVE_INCLUSIVE); // make first 4 characters Bold
sb.setSpan(iss, 4, 6, Spannable.SPAN_INCLUSIVE_INCLUSIVE); // make last 2 characters Italic
etx.setText(sb);

Based on Imran Rana's answer, here is a generic, reusable method if you need to apply StyleSpans to several TextViews, with support for multiple languages (where indices are variable):
void setTextWithSpan(TextView textView, String text, String spanText, StyleSpan style) {
SpannableStringBuilder sb = new SpannableStringBuilder(text);
int start = text.indexOf(spanText);
int end = start + spanText.length();
sb.setSpan(style, start, end, Spannable.SPAN_INCLUSIVE_INCLUSIVE);
textView.setText(sb);
}
Use it in an Activity like so:
#Override
protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
// ...
StyleSpan boldStyle = new StyleSpan(Typeface.BOLD);
setTextWithSpan((TextView) findViewById(R.id.welcome_text),
getString(R.string.welcome_text),
getString(R.string.welcome_text_bold),
boldStyle);
// ...
}
strings.xml
<string name="welcome_text">Welcome to CompanyName</string>
<string name="welcome_text_bold">CompanyName</string>
Result:
Welcome to CompanyName

You can do it using Kotlin and buildSpannedString extension function from core-ktx
holder.textView.text = buildSpannedString {
bold { append("$name\n") }
append("$experience $dateOfJoining")
}

The answers provided here are correct, but can't be called in a loop because the StyleSpan object is a single contiguous span (not a style that can be applied to multiple spans). Calling setSpan multiple times with the same bold StyleSpan would create one bold span and just move it around in the parent span.
In my case (displaying search results), I needed to make all instances of all the search keywords appear bold. This is what I did:
private static SpannableStringBuilder emboldenKeywords(final String text,
final String[] searchKeywords) {
// searching in the lower case text to make sure we catch all cases
final String loweredMasterText = text.toLowerCase(Locale.ENGLISH);
final SpannableStringBuilder span = new SpannableStringBuilder(text);
// for each keyword
for (final String keyword : searchKeywords) {
// lower the keyword to catch both lower and upper case chars
final String loweredKeyword = keyword.toLowerCase(Locale.ENGLISH);
// start at the beginning of the master text
int offset = 0;
int start;
final int len = keyword.length(); // let's calculate this outside the 'while'
while ((start = loweredMasterText.indexOf(loweredKeyword, offset)) >= 0) {
// make it bold
span.setSpan(new StyleSpan(Typeface.BOLD), start, start+len, SPAN_INCLUSIVE_INCLUSIVE);
// move your offset pointer
offset = start + len;
}
}
// put it in your TextView and smoke it!
return span;
}
Keep in mind that the code above isn't smart enough to skip double-bolding if one keyword is a substring of the other. For example, if you search for "Fish fi" inside "Fishes in the fisty Sea" it will make the "fish" bold once and then the "fi" portion. The good thing is that while inefficient and a bit undesirable, it won't have a visual drawback as your displayed result will still look like
Fishes in the fisty Sea

if you don't know exactly the length of the text before the text portion that you want to make Bold, or even you don't know the length of the text to be Bold, you can easily use HTML tags like the following:
yourTextView.setText(Html.fromHtml("text before " + "<font><b>" + "text to be Bold" + "</b></font>" + " text after"));

<string name="My_Name">Given name is <b>Not Right</b>Please try again </string>
use "b" tag in string.xml file.
also for Italic "i" and Underline "u".

Extending frieder's answer to support case and diacritics insensitivity.
public static String stripDiacritics(String s) {
s = Normalizer.normalize(s, Normalizer.Form.NFD);
s = s.replaceAll("[\\p{InCombiningDiacriticalMarks}]", "");
return s;
}
public static void setTextWithSpan(TextView textView, String text, String spanText, StyleSpan style, boolean caseDiacriticsInsensitive) {
SpannableStringBuilder sb = new SpannableStringBuilder(text);
int start;
if (caseDiacriticsInsensitive) {
start = stripDiacritics(text).toLowerCase(Locale.US).indexOf(stripDiacritics(spanText).toLowerCase(Locale.US));
} else {
start = text.indexOf(spanText);
}
int end = start + spanText.length();
if (start > -1)
sb.setSpan(style, start, end, Spannable.SPAN_INCLUSIVE_INCLUSIVE);
textView.setText(sb);
}

If you are using the # srings / your_string annotation, access the strings.xml file and use the <b></b> tag in the part of the text you want.
Example:
<string><b>Bold Text</b><i>italic</i>Normal Text</string>

I recommend to use strings.xml file with CDATA
<string name="mystring"><![CDATA[ <b>Hello</b> <i>World</i> ]]></string>
Then in the java file :
TextView myTextView = (TextView) this.findViewById(R.id.myTextView);
myTextView.setText(Html.fromHtml( getResources().getString(R.string.mystring) ));

To better support translations and remove any dependency on length of the string or particular index, you should use android.text.Annotation in you string defined strings.xml.
In your particular case, you can create a string like below
<string name="bold_name_experience_text"><annotation type="bold">name</annotation> \nexpirience dateOfJoininf</string>
or if you want to substitute these in runtime, you can create a string as follow
<string name="bold_name_experience_text"><annotation type="bold">name</annotation> \n%d %s</string>
You must apply this bold_name_experience_text in your text view label. These annotation class spans get added to your string and then you can iterate on them to apply the bold span.
You can refer to my SO answer which shows the Kotlin code to iterate through these spans and apply the bold span
Remember all the above answers has one of the following flows:
They are using some hard-coded index logic which may crash or give wrong results in some other language
They are using hardcode string in Java code which will result in lots of complicated logic to maintain internalisation
Some used Html.fromHtml which can be acceptable answer depending on the use-case. As Html.fromHtml doesn't always work for all types of HTML attributes for example there is not support of click span. Also depending on OEM you might get different rendered TextView