Develop Reference

How to remove span style from SpannableString

I was trying to remove style from my SpannableString but unfortunately is not working, my aim is to remove the style when I click on the text.
SpannableString content = new SpannableString("Test Text");
content.setSpan(new StyleSpan(Typeface.BOLD_ITALIC), 0, content.length(), 0);
...
onClick Action :
content.removeSpan(new StyleSpan(Typeface.BOLD_ITALIC)) // not working

Two styleSpan you new is not the same object. You can use a non-anonymous object to point it. Change your code like that:
StyleSpan styleSpan = new StyleSpan(Typeface.BOLD_ITALIC);
content.setSpan(styleSpan , 0, content.length(), 0);
onClick Action:
content.removeSpan(styleSpan);
textView.setText(content);// to redraw the TextView

As Zheng Xingjie pointed out you can remove a particular span with removeSpan() but you need to store the span object.
However, I came across a case that I need to remove a group of the same style spans anonymously, and leave other styles, So I did it by iterating on this particular type of spans as follows:
In my case, it was BackgroundColorSpan, but I will use StyleSpan like it had been asked:
Java
SpannableString content = new SpannableString("Test Text");
content.setSpan(new StyleSpan(Typeface.BOLD_ITALIC), 0, content.length(), 0);
StyleSpan[] spans = content.getSpans(0, content.length(), StyleSpan.class);
for (StyleSpan styleSpan: spans) content.removeSpan(styleSpan);
textview.setText(content);
Kotlin
val content = SpannableString("Test Text")
content.setSpan(StyleSpan(Typeface.BOLD_ITALIC), 0, content.length, 0)
val spans = content.getSpans(0, content.length, StyleSpan::class.java)
for (styleSpan in spans) content.removeSpan(styleSpan)
textview.setText(content)

How to substring a spannable?

I know how to take substring a normal string.
But how can I substring a spannable.
Consider following example.
This is my sample sentence.
now when I substring this i want to get the string "mple sente" just like this and with all this formatings.
In another words I want to substring a spannable not a string.
How can I do this?

Spannable is a CharSequence and you should be able to use CharSequence.subSequence(int start, int end) without losing any information about the spannable

Using below code you can get substring from spannable:
SpannableString ss1 = new SpannableString(s);
ss1.setSpan(new RelativeSizeSpan(1.1f), 0, 6, 0); // set size
ss1.setSpan(new ForegroundColorSpan(Color.RED), 0, 6, 0);
SpannableString ss = new SpannableString("Click here to learn more");
ss.setSpan(clickableSpan, 0, 10, Spanned.SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE);
textview.setText(ss);
Hope it helps you.

Multiple spans in same String

I've got problems to set StyleSpan and ForegroundColorSpan in the same string. Here's my code:
SpannableStringBuilder text_1_2 = new SpannableStringBuilder(getString(R.string.why_text_1_2));
StyleSpan bss = new StyleSpan(android.graphics.Typeface.BOLD);
ForegroundColorSpan fcs = new ForegroundColorSpan(getResources().getColor(R.color.custom_blue));
text_1_2.setSpan(fcs, 0 , text_1_2.length(), Spannable.SPAN_INCLUSIVE_INCLUSIVE);
text_1_2.setSpan(bss, 0, text_1_2.length(), Spannable.SPAN_INCLUSIVE_INCLUSIVE);
The resulting string has blue color but is not bold.
Thanks.

Can you try this
text_1_2.setSpan(new StyleSpan(android.graphics.Typeface.BOLD), 0 , text_1_2.length(), Spannable.SPAN_INCLUSIVE_INCLUSIVE);
text_1_2.setSpan(new ForegroundColorSpan(getResources().getColor(R.color.custom_blue)), 0, text_1_2.length(), Spannable.SPAN_INCLUSIVE_INCLUSIVE);
But my recommendation is if you don't want to style a part of the string apply the style and color using
android:textColor="#color/color_name"
android:textStyle="bold"

Android,setSpan twice?

Say I have a SpannableString that a URLSpan is set for span in it like this:
SpannableString ss = new SpannableString(text);
ss.setSpan(new URLSpan("com://my.app"), 3, 6,
Spanned.SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE);
Then I set another URLSpan for that span.But second URLSpan does not work and first one works.I can not use ss.removeSpan(what); because I do not want to remove all URLSpans.How I can solve this problem?

I use getSpans() in specific span(That I want to reset for it) to get it's span and then I use removeSpan to remove it:
SpannableString ss = new SpannableString(text);
ss.setSpan(new URLSpan("com://my.app"), 3, 6,Spanned.SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE);
URLSpan[] toRemoveSpans = ss.getSpans(3, 6, URLSpan.class);
ss.removeSpan(toRemoveSpans[0]);
ss.setSpan(new MyURLSpan("com://my.app"), 3, 6,Spanned.SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE);

combining multi strings and text in android

I'm pretty new to android, Java and sqlite. For my first program I'm creating a program that will take user input and place in predefined text.
Example: "text" string1 "more text" string2 "even more text" etc
My text will be one color and strings will display in another color.
I'm using sqlite to seperate my data and code and this is where I hit a wall. Trying to find help on how I will be able to combine my above text into one row/column in my database table.
Using only one above example i could get this up and running. But there will be 50+ of above example for release making a database a must especially when I want to add more after release.

Most probably you've read up on SpannableStringBuilder, which allows you to add color to the text in your TextView's content. Check out the code below:
SpannableStringBuilder ssb = new SpannableStringBuilder(<your text>);
ForegroundColorSpan fcs = new ForegroundColorSpan(Color.rgb(255, 0, 0));
ssb.setSpan(fcs, 0, ssb.length, Spannable.SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE);
textView.setText(ssb);
The code above will work in most cases, however what you want is to have different alternating colors on a single TextView. Then you should do the following:
String text = your_text + text_from_database;
SpannableStringBuilder ssb = new SpannableStringBuilder(text);
ForegroundColorSpan fcs = new ForegroundColorSpan(Color.rgb(255, 0, 0));
ForegroundColorSpan fcs2 = new ForegroundColorSpan(Color.rgb(0, 255 0));
ssb.setSpan(fcs, 0, your_text, Spannable.SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE);
ssb.setSpan(fcs2, your_text.length(), ssb.length(), Spannable.SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE);
textView.setText(ssb);
The above code will now work, but you'll notice that if you add another text your_another_text and want to use the previous fcs instance for a second time, the previously colored your_text will now lose its formatting (color). This time you'll need to create another ForegroundColorSpan fcs3 to format the third part of the SpannableStringBuilder. The key here is to use a character style in a setSpan method only once. See below:
String testTest = "abcdefgh";
String testTest2 = "ijklmnop";
String testTest3 = "qrstuvwxyz";
SpannableStringBuilder ssb = new SpannableStringBuilder(testTest+testTest2+testTest3);
ForegroundColorSpan fcs = new ForegroundColorSpan(Color.rgb(255, 0, 0));
ForegroundColorSpan fcs2 = new ForegroundColorSpan(Color.rgb(0, 255, 0));
ForegroundColorSpan fcs3 = new ForegroundColorSpan(Color.rgb(255, 0, 0));
ssb.setSpan(fcs, 0, testTest.length(), Spannable.SPAN_INCLUSIVE_INCLUSIVE);
ssb.setSpan(fcs2, testTest.length(), (testTest+testTest2).length(), Spannable.SPAN_INCLUSIVE_INCLUSIVE);
ssb.setSpan(fcs3, (testTest+testTest2).length(), ssb.length(), Spannable.SPAN_INCLUSIVE_INCLUSIVE);
test.setText(ssb);
This method is good if you know you have a fixed number of String elements in your SpannableStringBuilder. If you have wish to have a TextView of dynamic length and number of elements, you need to do this in a different approach. What worked for me was to convert each string element into a SpannableString, use setSpan, and append it to the TextView. This is useful if you're using a loop to build your TextView.
TextView test = (TextView)findViewById(R.id.test);
String testTest = "abcdefgh";
String testTest2 = "ijklmnop";
String testTest3 = "qrstuvwxyz";
SpannableString ssb = new SpannableString(testTest);
ForegroundColorSpan fcs = new ForegroundColorSpan(Color.rgb(255, 0, 0));
ForegroundColorSpan fcs2 = new ForegroundColorSpan(Color.rgb(0, 255, 0));
ForegroundColorSpan fcs3 = new ForegroundColorSpan(Color.rgb(255, 0, 0));
ssb.setSpan(fcs, 0, ssb.length(), Spannable.SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE);
test.setText(ssb);
SpannableString ssb2 = new SpannableString(testTest2);
ssb2.setSpan(fcs2, 0, ssb2.length(), Spannable.SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE);
test.append(ssb2);
SpannableString ssb3 = new SpannableString(testTest3);
ssb3.setSpan(fcs3, 0, ssb3.length(), Spannable.SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE);
test.append(ssb3);