Develop Reference

AutoFill EditText Android

I'm trying to create a search bar like.
I have to use a particular autofill, infact I can't use a dropdowns menu.
For example if I write Noce the edittext will have to suggest Nocera in the same editText, like this.
but if the user write something else the pointer have to the end of the typed text (in this case Noce) and the hint have to disappear.
Is there some library that allows me this?
Thanks for the help.

There's this library that will fulfill some of your requirement called Auto Fill EditText

Finally I have solved this using two EditText in the same position. The first one is a normal editable EditText, the second one is not editable from the user but is used to show the hints programmatically.

Use android:EditText as label

I want to set some text in EditText type fields. I want to do this while loading the activity. And then I don't want user to make any changes to it. Can I set EditText type boxes to non-editable mode? Does there exists any other element which could solve my purpose?

A TextView sounds like what you want; you can call setText() on them.
For EditText itself you could call this version of setText(), and set the buffer type to NORMAL instead of EDITABLE.

there are two options.
setEditable and setEnable. set false in Oncreate.
but in setEditable user can edit text by long click -> paste option.

If you are not taking any input from user in the EditText and it is just used to show some text that is set programmatically at onCreate, then you can use TextView instead. It is more suited for your requirement.
Here is a comparison between EditText and TextView that might be helpful.
Is there any particular reason for you to use a non-editable EditText? In case you absolutely have to use EditText then setting it as non-editable in your code after you set the value will suffice. You can do it in a few different ways, one of them would be setting input type as null in code.
yourEditText.setInputType(InputType.TYPE_NULL);

You can do android:enabled="false" in layout of that activity.
or
editText.setEnabled(false);

How to enter special characters in an EditText in Android?

Is there any way to input special characters (which are not present in the default soft keyboard ,eg. theta) in an Android EditText?
Thanks..

Well as per your need, I would like to suggest to create a custom keyboard because the stock keyboard which comes with the device may not have the special characters you need.
You can refer the following tutorial to create a custom keyboard
http://www.fampennings.nl/maarten/android/09keyboard/index.htm
or you can see this search result which may serve your purpose,
https://github.com/search?q=android+custom+keyboard&ref=cmdform
And from below site you can get the list of Unicode characters which Android supports,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unicode_characters
http://unicode-table.com/en/#0026
Note: Writing the whole code to create a custom keyboard is beyond the scope of this answer, so I mentioned the reference link.

What you are going to do is to create a custom keyboard. First thing you want is to hide the default keyboard when an EditText is focused:
getWindow().setSoftInputMode(
WindowManager.LayoutParams.SOFT_INPUT_STATE_ALWAYS_HIDDEN);
Now, you must create a custom layout (RelativeLayout or Multiple LinearLayouts this is your desire), create and set text to the buttons that you want to show. Make this keyboard view setVisibility(View.INVISIBLE) or setVisibility(View.GONE), and whenever your EditText is focused, make it setVisibility(View.VISIBLE).
After keyboard is visible, programming the rest is up to you it is practically easy.
If you also need a guide, here is an example.

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 soft keyboard modifications

Is there a way to programmatically remove certain keys from the standard software keyboard. By setting some of the input type flags I am so close to having the keyboard I need. From the calling application is there a way to modify the keyboard directly. I know how to make my own custom keyboard but it seems such a waste to remove one button from the standard one.
////// edit///////
I think I found a way around this if any one has tried this method please let me know if it worked for you.
I have going to grab the softKeyboard service and using the start hook the keyboard uses to grab its view object inflate my own and swap them.

From my research there is no way to implement your own custom keyboard from within a single application. If you want to have a custom keyboard you need to create one from scratch and can not use the IME

soft keyboard comes for edit text. you can modify the softkeyboard for that edit text.
For that you need to set inputType and imeOption property of that edit text.