Handle clicks on TextView's links while using Linkify for finding and setting the links inside the text

Question

i have a TextView filled with text which i get from a server. I'm using Linkify for handling all the link searching and for setting a URLSpan where needed throughout its addLinks method.

The problem is that the default behavior when clicking a link is opening it in a browser, what i want is to get the clicked link and handle it my self.

I don't see any method of Linkify which let me set a "OnClick" or something...

Thank for your help :)

Answer 1

Ok so i finally managed to set my own "OnClickListener" to the TextView's links. My solution was to copy Linkify to my project, name it CustomLinkify and just change its applyLink method:

From:

private static final void applyLink(String url, int start, int end, Spannable text) 
{
    URLSpan span = new URLSpan(url);

    text.setSpan(span, start, end, Spanned.SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE);
}

To:

private static final void applyLink(final String url, int start, int end, Spannable text) 
{
    URLSpan span = new URLSpan(url)
    {
        @Override
        public void onClick(View widget)
        {
            _onLinkClickListener.onLinkClicked(url);
        }
    };

    text.setSpan(span, start, end, Spanned.SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE);
}

Where _onLinkClickListener is a new field, set by me before using the new CustomLinkify.

I know its not a very elegant solution and i prefered google to allow setting a listener through the native Linkify, but, for me, this is better than implementing my own Spannable logics (as suggested in other related questions).

I trust the Linkify code and i guess i'll check from time to time to see if any changes made on it, if so, i'll of course update CustomLinkify with the changes.

Hope this will help someone.

Answer 2

Maybe you should use a WebView instead of a TextView?

Answer 3

I also find it tedious to implement custom Spannable logics in app, and end up creating a library for this. See Textoo.

With Textoo, this can be achieve like:

TextView myTextView = Textoo
    .config((TextView) findViewById(R.id.my_text_view))
    .linkifyEmailAddresses()
    .linkifyMapAddresses()
    .linkifyPhoneNumbers()
    .linkifyWebUrls()  // or just .linkifyAll()
    .linkify(patternSettings, "internal://settings/")
    .linkify(patternGoogle, "http://www.google.ie/search2?q=", null, transformFilter)
    .linkify(patternGoogle, "http://www.google.ie/search3?q=", matchFilter, transformFilter)
    .addLinksHandler(new LinksHandler() {
        @Override
        public boolean onClick(View view, String url) {
            if ("internal://settings/location".equals(url)) {
                Intent locSettings = new Intent(android.provider.Settings.ACTION_LOCATION_SOURCE_SETTINGS);
                startActivity(locSettings);
                return true;
            } else {
                return false;
            }
        }
    })
    .apply();

Just to share and hope somebody will find it useful.