Develop Reference

AutoCompleteTextView item selection programmatically

I have an AutoCompleteTextView that is filled with cities from an sqlite database that calls an AsyncTask on item click, recently I added an option to detect my location using the gps, so the problem is I can detect the city (i.e Beirut) and set the text for the AutoCompleteTextView but the thing is that the dropdown filter opens showing Beirut (which is correct) but I still need to click on the list item to invoke the listener, how to do so programmatically
How to:
Enter the Activity (DONE)
Detect location (DONE)
set text of text view (DONE)
show textview dropdown list(DONE)
choose the item that will be returned, since it will only return one city (NOT DONE)

To be clear, Tano's solution is sufficient to answer this question. But, in case others run into the same use case I did, here's some more background that may potentially help you...
I had been running into this issue specifically while trying to make a non-editable Material Exposed Dropdown Menu and set it's initial value programmatically. The documentation to create this type of "dropdown" can be found in the Exposed Dropdown Menus section here, which suggests a mechanism using TextInputLayout and AutocompleteTextView (even if you don't want autocomplete functionality).
Failed Solution 1:
At first glance setListSelection() and getListSelection() seemed like they might do the trick. But after many trials, I learned that they may not be sufficient because they only work when the list popup isShowing(). So for example, if you simply want to set the initial selection without having to show the list popup first, this will not work.
Failed Solution 2:
Then I tried setText() which showed the proper text in my textbox. Yay! But wait! When I clicked on the text view, only a subset of options in the list popup were shown for some reason. Why was that? The key thing to keep in mind here is that since this is an autocomplete textview, it by default filters out options based off of the text in the textview. This might not be apparent, especially if you're solely using this control for the sake of making a simple non-editable dropdown selector.
Solution:
This brings us to our actual solution (suggested by Tano)... setText() with filter as false will turn off the filtering capabilities AND it will not change the contents of your list popup.
autoCompleteTextView.setText(myText, false);

I was facing a similar problem and this solved my issue. Important is to call setText(<text>, <filter boolean>) in order not to filter with the given text set the second parameter with false. The text will be got from the dropdown adapter.
Solution snippet:
automCompleteTextView.setText(automCompleteTextView.getAdapter().getItem(position).toString(), false);

A solution were you don't need to change your API level.
automCompleteTextView.setAdapter(adapter);
// set default selection, filtering is active so all items is not visible in drop-down menu
automCompleteTextView.setText(automCompleteTextView.getAdapter().getItem(0).toString());
// change filtering for the adapter so all items can be visible in drop-down menu
adapter.getFilter().filter(null);
one-liner for the same job but requires higher API level
automCompleteTextView.setText(automCompleteTextView.getAdapter().getItem(0).toString(), false);

I figure out after dig into the AutoCompleteTextView code on android source code:
fun AutoCompleteTextView.selectItem(text: String, position: Int = 0) {
this.setText(text)
this.showDropDown()
this.setSelection(position)
this.listSelection = position
this.performCompletion()
}

autoComplete.setListSelection(position);

I have used autoCompleteTextView.setText(myText, false); solution as well, however it sometimes failed. I mean it was actively filtering results so, when user clicks there was only 1 item at dropdown.
In addition I also needed this to work on custom objects as well, and this is my my solution:
binding.hourEditText.configureDropDownMenu(viewModel.hours) { it.hourString() }
.subscribe {
// Do whatever you need when on click.
}
.addTo(disposables)
fun <T> AutoCompleteTextView.configureDropDownMenu(list: List<T>, toString: ((T) -> String)? = null): Observable<T> {
keyListener = null
val textItems = toString?.let(list::map) ?: list.map { it.toString() }
setAdapter(NonFilterArrayAdapter(context!!, android.R.layout.simple_spinner_dropdown_item, textItems))
return itemClickEvents().map {
list[it.position]
}
}
private class NonFilterArrayAdapter<T>(context: Context, #LayoutRes resource: Int, objects: List<T>) : ArrayAdapter<T>(context, resource, objects) {
override fun getFilter() = NonFilter()
private class NonFilter : Filter() {
override fun performFiltering(constraint: CharSequence?) = FilterResults()
override fun publishResults(constraint: CharSequence?, results: FilterResults?) = Unit
}
}
Note: This also contains a bit of Rx, but it can be removed easily.

Try with adding below after setText() in AutoCompleteTextview:-
autoCompleteTV.setSelection(position);
Updated:
This will work in Spinner and AutoCompleteTextView which has dropdown feature, but it will not work with EditText.
Here you can check docs for AbsSpinner in this link:
https://developer.android.com/reference/android/widget/AbsSpinner.html#setSelection(int)

The problem is that you are setting a text and the AutoCompleteTextView is only showing words that match with that text. A non elegant way of solving this is to set an high threshold (at least the max length of the names of the cities) to force Android to show you all the values of your list (this threshold is the number of characters that the field must have to search similarities).

Using the Nilton Vasques solution it can be so:
with(autoComplete) {
setAdapter(this#YourFragment.adapter)
setText(itemText)
showDropDown()
listSelection = if (itemIndex > 0) itemIndex - 1 else 0 // Because AutoCompleteTextView shows the next row.
performCompletion()
}
Notice, that it will show a drop-down list, otherwise listSelection won't work. If you call dismissDropDown(), the item won't be selected. If you don't want to show the drop-down list, you can use setOnTouchListener to capture opening the list, but it hardly will help (you should resolve a filtering problem).
setOnTouchListener { _, event ->
if (event.action == MotionEvent.ACTION_DOWN) {
showDropDown()
listSelection = if (itemIndex > 0) itemIndex - 1 else 0
performCompletion()
requestFocus()
}
false
}

Android - AutoCompleteTextView not showing after setText is called

I'm having a weird issue with AutoCompleteTextView.
I have a AutoCompleteTextView that shows suggestions of cities when typing in it.
The list of cities is retrieved from a remote server via JSON. When I use the soft keyboard or the Mic Button on the soft keyboard, the suggestions work fine. AutoCompleteTextView does show the suggested cities.
But, I have a problem when I try to set the text using myAutoCompleteTextView.setText("Chi") , the auto complete does not show..
I have also tried myAutoCompleteTextView.append("Chi") but still no luck..
The adapter is there, its just that the suggestions don't show.
Any tips?
Thanks.

Yes you are right there is a bug in AutocompleteTextview to show default suggestion using setText(""); method.
But you can achieve this by adding some more lines of code as below.
autoText.postDelayed(new Runnable() {
#Override
public void run() {
autoText.showDropDown();
}
},500);
autoText.setText("chi");
autoText.setSelection(autoText.getText().length());

It is due to filtering,
No Need to any extra code for manage it, I found it in very easy and working way.
Google Dev. Reference link
autoText.setText("Default Value here",false)
autoText.setSelection(autoText.text.count()) // kotlin
as per documentation second parameter you can pass for filtering.
boolean: If false, no filtering will be performed as a result of this call.

Biraj Zalavadia's answer work, but you must write to "settext" in Runnable.
Like this:
mACTextViewEmail.postDelayed(new Runnable() {
#Override
public void run() {
mACTextViewEmail.showDropDown();
mACTextViewEmail.setText("My text is here");
mACTextViewEmail.setSelection(mACTextViewEmail.getText().length());
}
},500);

I searched for it and just found this solution that worked so well
Look at this issue
fun AutoCompleteTextView.showDropdown(adapter: ArrayAdapter<String>?) {
if(!TextUtils.isEmpty(this.text.toString())){
adapter?.filter?.filter(null)
}
}
In kotlin language, you can use this extension function.

Android: Prevent text field pop-up when entering text in a SearchView

Hello Android developers,
I've got a problem with the Android SearchView widget. What I'm trying to do is to attach a "live" text filter to my ListView (text input automatically refreshes filter results). It works actually fine and it was no huge effort to get it working on my ListActivity with these lines:
private SearchView listFilter;
this.listFilter = (SearchView) findViewById(R.id.listFilter);
this.listFilter.setOnQueryTextListener(this);
this.listFilter.setSubmitButtonEnabled(false);
this.getListView().setOnItemClickListener(this);
this.getListView().setTextFilterEnabled(true);
// from OnQueryTextListener
public boolean onQueryTextChange(String newText) {
if (newText.isEmpty()) {
this.getListView().clearTextFilter();
} else {
this.getListView().setFilterText(newText);
}
return true;
}
And here the xml widget declaration
<SearchView
android:id="#+id/listFilter"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:iconifiedByDefault="false"
android:queryHint="enter text to filter" />
Now what my problem is that every time I enter text into the SearchView, a strange text field pops up instantly showing the same text as I just entered which is kind of useless since I can see my input in the SearchView itself and it partly blocks the sight on my list entries, which is just annoying.
Is there any way to prevent that text field from popping up on typing into the SearchView? I couldn't find any property neither on the xml defined widget options nor on the java class reference.
I know there is another way to provide the filter functionality by using EditText and TextWatcher, but then I have to handle the filtering all by myself and couldn't profit from the SearchView handling it for me.
Any suggestions are appreciated.
Best regards
Felix

i found out how to get rid of that ugly popup window. The trick is to work with filter directly.The code below assumes you have implemented filterable in your customAdapter.
public boolean onQueryTextChange(String newText) {
if (TextUtils.isEmpty(newText)) {
m_listView.clearTextFilter();
} else {
ContactsAdapter ca = (ContactsAdapter)lv.getAdapter();
ca.getFilter().filter(newText);
//following line was causing the ugly popup window.
//m_listView.setFilterText(newText);
}
return true;
}

How to use Android Spinner like a drop-down list

It's taken me quite a while to get my head around the Android Spinner. After several failed implementation attempts, and after reading many questions partially similar to my own but without satisfactory answers, and some without any answers at all, e.g. here and here, I finally get that a "spinner" in Android isn't meant to be the same thing as a "drop-down list" from desktop apps, or a select in HTML. However, what my app (and I'm guessing the apps of all the other posters whose questions are similar) needs is something that works like a drop-down box, not like a spinner.
My two problems are with what I first considered to be idiosynchrasies the OnItemSelectedListener (I've seen these as separate questions on this site but not as one):
An initial selection of the first list item is triggered automatically without the user's interaction.
When the item that was already selected is selected again by the user, it is ignored.
Now I realise that, when you think about it, it makes sense for this to happen on a spinner - it has to start with a default value selected, and you spin it only to change that value, not to "re-select" a value - the documentation actually says: "This callback is invoked only when the newly selected position is different from the previously selected position". And I've seen answers suggesting that you set up a flag to ignore the first automatic selection - I guess I could live with that if there's no other way.
But since what I really want is a drop-down list which behaves as a drop-down list should (and as users can and should expect), what I need is something like a Spinner that behaves like a drop-down, like a combo-box. I don't care about any automatic pre-selection (that should happen without triggering my listener), and I want to know about every selection, even if it's the same one as previously (after all, the user selected the same item again).
So... is there something in Android that can do that, or some workaround to make a Spinner behave like a drop-down list? If there is a question like this one on this site that I haven't found, and which has a satisfactory answer, please let me know (in which case I sincerely apologise for repeating the question).

+1 to David's answer. However, here's an implementation suggestion that does not involve copy-pasting code from the source (which, by the way, looks exactly the same as David posted in 2.3 as well):
#Override
void setSelectionInt(int position, boolean animate) {
mOldSelectedPosition = INVALID_POSITION;
super.setSelectionInt(position, animate);
}
This way you'll trick the parent method into thinking it's a new position every time.
Alternatively, you could try setting the position to invalid when the spinner is clicked and setting it back in onNothingSelected. This is not as nice, because the user will not see what item is selected while the dialog is up.

Ok, I think I've come up with a solution for my own situation with the help of both David's and Felix' answer (I believe David's helped Felix', which in turn helped mine). I thought I'd post it here together with a code sample in case someone else finds this approach useful as well. It also solves both of my problems (both the unwanted automatic selection and the desired re-selection trigger).
What I've done is added a "please select" dummy item as the first item in my list (initially just to get around the automatic selection problem so that I could ignore when it was selected without user interaction), and then, when another item is selected and I've handled the selection, I simply reset the spinner to the dummy item (which gets ignored). Come to think of it, I should've thought of this long ago before deciding to post my question on this site, but things are always more obvious in hindsight... and I found that writing my question actually helped me to think about what I wanted to achieve.
Obviously, if having a dummy item doesn't fit your situation, this might not be the ideal solution for you, but since what I wanted was to trigger an action when the user selected a value (and having the value remain selected is not required in my specific case), this works just fine. I'll try to add a simplified code example (may not compile as is, I've ripped out a few bits from my working code and renamed things before pasting, but hopefully you'll get the idea) below.
First, the list activity (in my case) containing the spinner, let's call it MyListActivity:
public class MyListActivity extends ListActivity {
private Spinner mySpinner;
#Override
public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
// TODO: other code as required...
mySpinner = (Spinner) findViewById(R.id.mySpinner);
mySpinner.setAdapter(new MySpinnerAdapter(this));
mySpinner.setOnItemSelectedListener(new OnItemSelectedListener() {
#Override
public void onItemSelected(AdapterView<?> aParentView,
View aView, int aPosition, long anId) {
if (aPosition == 0) {
Log.d(getClass().getName(), "Ignoring selection of dummy list item...");
} else {
Log.d(getClass().getName(), "Handling selection of actual list item...");
// TODO: insert code to handle selection
resetSelection();
}
}
#Override
public void onNothingSelected(AdapterView<?> anAdapterView) {
// do nothing
}
});
}
/**
* Reset the filter spinner selection to 0 - which is ignored in
* onItemSelected() - so that a subsequent selection of another item is
* triggered, regardless of whether it's the same item that was selected
* previously.
*/
protected void resetSelection() {
Log.d(getClass().getName(), "Resetting selection to 0 (i.e. 'please select' item).");
mySpinner.setSelection(0);
}
}
And the spinner adapter code could look something like this (could in fact be an inner class in the above list activity if you prefer):
public class MySpinnerAdapter extends BaseAdapter implements SpinnerAdapter {
private List<MyListItem> items; // replace MyListItem with your model object type
private Context context;
public MySpinnerAdapter(Context aContext) {
context = aContext;
items = new ArrayList<MyListItem>();
items.add(null); // add first dummy item - selection of this will be ignored
// TODO: add other items;
}
#Override
public int getCount() {
return items.size();
}
#Override
public Object getItem(int aPosition) {
return items.get(aPosition);
}
#Override
public long getItemId(int aPosition) {
return aPosition;
}
#Override
public View getView(int aPosition, View aView, ViewGroup aParent) {
TextView text = new TextView(context);
if (aPosition == 0) {
text.setText("-- Please select --"); // text for first dummy item
} else {
text.setText(items.get(aPosition).toString());
// or use whatever model attribute you'd like displayed instead of toString()
}
return text;
}
}
I guess (haven't tried this) the same effect could be achieved using setSelected(false) instead of setSelection(0), but re-setting to "please select" suits my purposes fine. And, "look, Ma, no flag!" (Although I guess ignoring 0 selections is not that dissimilar.)
Hopefully, this can help someone else out there with a similar use case. :-) For other use cases, Felix' answer may be more suitable (thanks Felix!).

Look. I don't know if this will help you, but since you seem tired of looking for an answer without much success, this idea may help you, who knows...
The Spinner class is derived from AbsSpinner. Inside this, there is this method:
void setSelectionInt(int position, boolean animate) {
if (position != mOldSelectedPosition) {
mBlockLayoutRequests = true;
int delta = position - mSelectedPosition;
setNextSelectedPositionInt(position);
layout(delta, animate);
mBlockLayoutRequests = false;
}
}
This is AFAIK taken from 1.5 source. Perhaps you could check that source, see how Spinner/AbsSpinner works, and maybe extend that class just enough to catch the proper method and not check if position != mOldSelectedPosition.
I mean... that's a huge "maybe" with a lot of "ifs" (android versioning comes to mind etc.), but since you seem frustrated (and I've been there with Android many times), maybe this can give you some "light". And I assume that there are no other obvious answers by looking at your previous research.
I wish you good luck!

Here is an alternative solution to differentiate between any (intended or unintended) programmatic and user-initiated changes:
Create your listener for the spinner as both an OnTouchListener and OnItemSelectedListener
public class SpinnerInteractionListener implements AdapterView.OnItemSelectedListener, View.OnTouchListener {
boolean userSelect = false;
#Override
public boolean onTouch(View v, MotionEvent event) {
userSelect = true;
return false;
}
#Override
public void onItemSelected(AdapterView<?> parent, View view, int pos, long id) {
if (userSelect) {
// Your selection handling code here
userSelect = false;
}
}
}
Add the listener to the spinner registering for both event types
SpinnerInteractionListener listener = new SpinnerInteractionListener();
mSpinnerView.setOnTouchListener(listener);
mSpinnerView.setOnItemSelectedListener(listener);
This wouldn't handle the case in which the re-selection of the same item by the user doesn't trigger the onItemSelected method (which I have not observed), but I guess that could be handled by adding some code to the onTouch method.
Anyway, the problems Amos pointed out were driving me crazy before thinking of this solution, so I thought I'd share as widely as possible. There are many threads that discuss this, but I've only seen one other solution so far that is similar to this: https://stackoverflow.com/a/25070696/4556980.

Modifying the Spinner is useful if you want to have multiple selections simultaneously in the same activity.
If you only desire the user to have a hierarchical selection, for example:
What do you want to eat?
Fruit
Apples
Bananas
Oranges
Fast Food
Burgers
Fries
Hot dogs,
then the ExpandableListView might be better for you. It allows the user to navigate a hierarchy of different groups and choose a child element. This would be similar to having several Spinners for the user to choose from - if you do not desire a simultaneous selection, that is.

I worked through several of the issues mentioned in this thread before I realized that the PopupMenu widget is what I really wanted. That was easy to implement without the hacks and workarounds needed to change the functionality of a Spinner. PopupMenu was relatively new when this thread was started in 2011, but I hope this helps someone searching for similar functionality now.

How can the on-screen text selection widget be changed?

I noticed that different Android applications have different methods of selecting text. If you click-hold in Browser, there is a close up of the text plus the left and right edges can be dragged to modify the selection. In the Gmail app, a large blue circle appears below the cursor which makes it easy to move around.
The default text selection widget in an EditText box is very primitive by comparison. How can it be changed?
Update: I forgot to mention that editable is false. When editable is true the text selector is fine.
p.s. What its the proper name for the on-screen text selector?

As of Android 3.0 (API level 11), you can set the android:textIsSelectable attribute on any TextView to make its text selectable. The default UI as of this writing is similar to the behavior you referenced for the browser.
EDIT: Also, the default Android browser uses its own system-independent text selection mechanism that resembles the default text selection handles in Gingerbread. The "blue circle" sounds like a customized interface that a handset manufacturer added.

I would implement this as a custom class that extends EditText and implements LongClickListener and ClickListener. Then you can take complete control.
This is all just pseudo-code, and to point you in the right direction:
public class PrettySelectionEditText extends EditText implements OnLongClickListener, OnClickListener
{
private boolean isSelecting = false;
public PrettySelectionEditText(Context context)
{
super(context);
}
#Override
public boolean onLongClick(View v)
{
if (clickIsOnText)
{
isSelecting = true;
//Highlight word and pretty controls
}
//Select here based on the text they've clicked on?
//Return true if you want to consume the longClick
return true;
}
#Override
public void onClick(View v)
{
//If in selection mode
if (isSelecting)
{
//check where they've clicked
if (clickIsInSelect)
{
updateSelection(click);
}
else
{
isSelecting = false;
}
}
}
}

You could use a WebView instead and enable text selection.

If this is merely a problem of being unable to highlight uneditable text, you can use the XML attribute
android:textIsSelectable="true"
for that EditText box.
From the Android website:
android:textIsSelectable="true" indicates that the content of a non-editable text can be selected.
As for your question regarding terminology, I would call this the cursor.