Develop Reference

Opening Keypad with GO

Hi I want to open keypad when the EditText is focused , with GO in place of Next and Done Buttons.
I used
android:imeOptions="actionGo"
in EditText xml tag but it's only showing an arrow not GO.
Thanks in advance

The keyboard itself decides what to show, based on its own set of choices. There is no way to force it to show anything, and not all keyboards will decide based on the same things. You can improve your odds by only using 1 of those options and by making sure its not multiline (many keyboards will not remove their enter key in a multiline edit field), but its still up to the keyboard.

Android Edit Text Cursor Doesn't Appear

in my app I disabled the keyboard (I use now my custom keyboard) using this code:
editText.setInputType(InputType.TYPE_NULL);
Now, my problem is that the text cursor does not appear anymore in the edit text. What should I do? Any suggestion would be very appreciated.

There is an Issue opened in bug tracker Issue opened in bug tracker for this.
One of the users suggests the approach which works on "most" devices.
Briefly, all you have to do is call:
editText.setRawInputType(InputType.TYPE_CLASS_TEXT);
for your EditText view (after you called editText.setInputType(InputType.TYPE_NULL);).
You should probably also set:
editText.setTextIsSelectable(true);
in order for text to be selectable (though in does not seem to work properly with Samsung Galaxy SIII). This method is only available starting from HONEYCOMB (api11) so keep that in mind when developing for older Android versions.
Also it is stated that your EditText should not be the first view to receive focus when activity starts (if it is - just requestFocus() from another view). Though I (personally) have not experienced any problems with this.

Rather than just using a custom view for your custom keyboard, why not implement a full-fledged IME? That will solve your cursor problem, and even make your keyboard available outside your app (if you want).
This answer has a couple useful links if you want to do that:
How to develop a soft keyboard for Android?

I really wouldn't suggest this. Writing a good full fledged IME is really hard. In addition, users come to expect functionality from their keyboard (auto-correct, Swyping, next word prediction, the ability to change languages) that you won't have unless you spend months on the keyboard itself. Any app that wouldn't allow me to use Swype would immediately be removed (bias note: I worked on Swype android).
But if you want to integrate fully with the OS as a keyboard, you're going to have to write an InputMethodService. Your keyboard would then be selectable by the user in the keyboard select menu, and usable for any app. That's the only way to get full OS integration, otherwise you'll need to really start from scratch- writing your own EditView. Have fun with that, getting one that looks nice is decidedly non-trivial.
Also, setting input type null won't disable most keyboards. It just puts them into dumb mode and turns off things like prediction.

I tried the below answer and it worked, but take care that
1) EditText must not be focused on initialization
2) when your orientation changes while the user's focus is on the editText, the stock keyboard pops up, which is another "solvable" problem.
This was mentioned in a previous answer but take care that you MUST make sure your editText element do not get focus on instantiation:
https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=27609#c7
#7 nyphb...#gmail.com
I have finally found a (for me) working solution to this.
First part (in onCreate):
mText.setInputType(InputType.TYPE_NULL);
if (android.os.Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= 11 /*android.os.Build.VERSION_CODES.HONEYCOMB*/) {
// this fakes the TextView (which actually handles cursor drawing)
// into drawing the cursor even though you've disabled soft input
// with TYPE_NULL
mText.setRawInputType(InputType.TYPE_CLASS_TEXT);
}
In addition, android:textIsSelectable needs to be set to true (or set in onCreate) and the EditText must not be focused on initialization. If your EditText is the first focusable View (which it was in my case), you can work around this by putting this just above it:
<LinearLayout
android:layout_width="0px"
android:layout_height="0px"
android:focusable="true"
android:focusableInTouchMode="true" >
<requestFocus />
</LinearLayout>

How to prevent the soft keyboard from displaying, or at least evict it once it does?

My app has an EditText that, when I click in it to enter text in the Emulator, brings up a soft keyboard. I don't want this confounded thing to begin with, but then, like the visiting loud-mouthed uncle in the plaid pants, doesn't want to go away, and it is blocking the button beneath it. How do I either (a) prorgrammatically prevent the soft keyboard from appearing or at least (b) evict it, albeit manually, when it pops up?

Provided that the user is not supposed to input text, but is able to click the EditText and then add text in some other way, you could change the EditText to a TextView and then apply the following three tags to it in the layout file:
style="#android:style/Widget.EditText"
android:editable="false"
android:focusableInTouchMode="false"
This will make it look like an EditText, but behave like a TextView.
Since you want the user to be able to write stuff in the EditText there are in my opinion two solutions:
Leave it be. To remove the keyboard, all you need is to hit the back button once and every Android user knows this. It's standard behaviour.
Wrap everything but the Button you say dissapears in a ScrollView. The ScrollView will then wrap its content to allow the Button to be shown in between the keyboard and the ScrollView.

Just set android:editable="false" for your EditText

The answer is to set the focus on an other View like a Button, TextView or similar:
// REQUEST FOCUS
viewName.setFocusableInTouchMode(true);
viewName.requestFocus();

I think what you really need is take a look at android:windowSoftInputMode attribute in Manifest.xml Look into this link.
You can specify the screen to pan/ resize to show the buttons that the input method might be blocking. Not allowing the keyboard to show will make the user unable to enter text at all!

Android Phone EditText not updating the display on the device

I've got a small Android app that I am developing and I have an EditText element which does not like to display it's contents while the keyboard is on the screeen.
For example I touch the editTextbox and it brings up the keyboard, pressing a letter, say a displays a in the textbox, but after that no new text shows up so the user is essentially typing blind from that point on.
This only happens on the device and not in the emulator. Vodafone 845 if it makes any difference.
The code I am using for the EditText is this.
<EditText
android:id="#+id/EditAddress"
android:layout_width="200px"
android:singleLine="True"
android:hint="Address or Landmark"/>
I did have a OnKeyListener and an OnClickListener, but removing them from the code makes no changes to the behaviour. The EditText is also inside of a TableLayout which is inside of another TableLayout. This is the only EditText that is behaving badly on the device. (I have not coded any others in the application. But might add some just to find out whats wrong.
EDIT: Ok, it seems to be caused if the keyboard obscures the location of the original editbox such that the view has to scroll down so the editbox will not be covered by the software keyboard. For now I can rearrange my page so the edit box is at the top. But this is a bit of a hacky solution. Anyone know what causes this and/or how to fix it.

I think you need to give it a layout_height as well. Even if it is wrap_content or the like.

How do you make an EditText whose original text can only be fully changed?

In the Google Maps app, there's a unique EditText that I'd like to reproduce. If you click "menu" then go to "directions", the "start point" field should begin with "My Location" as the text. The interesting part of this field is its behavior - you cannot edit "My Location" without completely deleting it first.
I have a few places where such behavior would be useful, but I can never quite fully reproduce this. There are three challenges involved with this behavior:
No matter what the user does, they cannot partially edit the field; it is always fully selected.
The keyboard directional keys, rather than moving around the EditText field, change focus.
When the user does choose to change the text, the behavior of #1 and #2 disappear and the field acts like a normal EditText.
Has anyone ever successfully reproduced this behavior?

Isn't it just a hint? Try setting
android:hint="My Location"
on the EditText in your layout resources.