216

I know this is so easy (doh...) but I am looking for a way to run a method on tapping or clicking a TextView line of text in an Android App.

I keep thinking about button listeners and anonymous method listener calls, but it just does not seem to apply to TextView.

Can someone point me at some code snippet to show how clicking or tapping on a piece of text in a TextView runs a method?

Droid
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8 Answers8

473

You can set the click handler in xml with these attribute:

android:onClick="onClick"
android:clickable="true"

Don't forget the clickable attribute, without it, the click handler isn't called.

main.xml

    ...

    <TextView 
       android:id="@+id/click"
       android:layout_width="wrap_content"
       android:layout_height="wrap_content"               
       android:text="Click Me"
       android:textSize="55sp"
       android:onClick="onClick"                
       android:clickable="true"/>
    ...

MyActivity.java

       public class MyActivity extends Activity {

          public void onClick(View v) {
            ...
          }  
       }
Patrick Cullen
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    "Don't forget the clickable attribute, without it, the click handler isn't called." This line saved y day. Thanks a lot buddy. – N-JOY Jun 28 '11 at 07:48
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    http://developer.android.com/reference/android/view/View.html#attr_android:onClick needs to mention something about clickable. could have saved an hour. – taylor Feb 19 '13 at 04:14
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    funnily enough, using `setOnClickListener` sets the `clickable` attribute, but using the `onClick` attribute apparently does not. – njzk2 Jul 25 '14 at 15:04
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    It seems like `onClick` _does_ set the `clickable` attribute in Android 5.0 Lollipop (API 21). Maybe they considered it a bug that this didn't happen in older versions? – Mark Doliner Nov 13 '14 at 23:48
  • Is there a way to do this for long click via XML ? – Amyth Mar 17 '15 at 04:48
  • I learned today that I didn't need to set clickable for regular app function, but for Espresso tests, I needed to set the clickable attribute to true or else my tests couldn't click the TextView. – Zeek Aran Feb 22 '18 at 16:15
  • It also seems like in addition, `enabled` needs to be `true` clickable to work – O-9 Apr 23 '19 at 11:34
  • "Don't forget to make it public" would have been helpful too ^^ but thx – Boommeister Dec 12 '20 at 16:46
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    Also it's preferable to set `android:focusable = true` too – Amin Guermazi Aug 29 '21 at 14:49
56

This may not be quite what you are looking for but this is what worked for what I'm doing. All of this is after my onCreate:

boilingpointK = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.boilingpointK);

boilingpointK.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() {
    @Override
    public void onClick(View v) {
        if ("Boiling Point K".equals(boilingpointK.getText().toString()))
            boilingpointK.setText("2792");
        else if ("2792".equals(boilingpointK.getText().toString()))
            boilingpointK.setText("Boiling Point K");
    }
});
AlvaroSantisteban
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Joshua Sutherland
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27

OK I have answered my own question (but is it the best way?)

This is how to run a method when you click or tap on some text in a TextView:

package com.textviewy;

import android.app.Activity;
import android.os.Bundle;
import android.view.View;
import android.view.View.OnClickListener;
import android.widget.TextView;

public class TextyView extends Activity implements OnClickListener {

TextView t ;
@Override
public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
    setContentView(R.layout.main);
    t = (TextView)findViewById(R.id.TextView01);
    t.setOnClickListener(this);
}

public void onClick(View arg0) {
    t.setText("My text on click");  
    }
}

and my main.xml is:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
 android:orientation="vertical"
 android:layout_width="fill_parent"
 android:layout_height="fill_parent"
 >
<LinearLayout android:id="@+id/LinearLayout01" android:layout_width="wrap_content"             android:layout_height="wrap_content"></LinearLayout>
<ListView android:id="@+id/ListView01" android:layout_width="wrap_content"   android:layout_height="wrap_content"></ListView>
<LinearLayout android:id="@+id/LinearLayout02" android:layout_width="wrap_content"   android:layout_height="wrap_content"></LinearLayout>

<TextView android:text="This is my first text"
 android:id="@+id/TextView01" 
 android:layout_width="wrap_content" 
 android:textStyle="bold"
 android:textSize="28dip"
 android:editable = "true"
 android:clickable="true"
 android:layout_height="wrap_content">
 </TextView>
 </LinearLayout>
Joey
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Droid
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13

from inside an activity that calls a layout and a textview, this click listener works:

setContentView(R.layout.your_layout);
TextView tvGmail = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.tvGmail);
String TAG = "yourLogCatTag";
tvGmail.setOnClickListener(new OnClickListener() {
            @Override
            public void onClick(View viewIn) {
                try {
                    Log.d(TAG,"GMAIL account selected");
                } catch (Exception except) {
                    Log.e(TAG,"Ooops GMAIL account selection problem "+except.getMessage());
                }
            }
        });

the text view is declared like this (default wizard):

        <TextView
            android:id="@+id/tvGmail"
            android:layout_width="fill_parent"
            android:layout_height="wrap_content"
            android:text="@string/menu_id_google"
            android:textSize="30sp" />

and in the strings.xml file

<string name="menu_id_google">Google ID (Gmail)</string>
tony gil
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12

Although you can resolve the problem by setting the listener to textview, it's recommended not to. You should use flat button as it is a subclass of Button and it provides many attributes which TextView doesn't.


To use flat button, add style="?android:attr/borderlessButtonStyle" attribute -

<Button
    android:layout_width="wrap_content"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:text="DONE"
    style="?android:attr/borderlessButtonStyle"/>
Confuse
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9

in textView

<TextView
    android:layout_width="wrap_content"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:text="New Text"
    android:onClick="onClick"
    android:clickable="true"

You must also implement View.OnClickListener and in On Click method can use intent

    Intent intent = new Intent(android.content.Intent.ACTION_VIEW);
           intent.setData(Uri.parse("https://youraddress.com"));    
            startActivity(intent);

I tested this solution works fine.

rp23b
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4

To click on a piece of the text (not the whole TextView), you can use Html or Linkify (both create links that open urls, though, not a callback in the app).

Linkify

Use a string resource like:

<string name="links">Here is a link: http://www.stackoverflow.com</string>

Then in a textview:

TextView textView = ...
textView.setText(R.string.links);
Linkify.addLinks(textView, Linkify.ALL);

Html

Using Html.fromHtml:

<string name="html">Here you can put html &lt;a href="http://www.stackoverflow.com"&gt;Link!&lt;/&gt;</string>

Then in your textview:

textView.setText(Html.fromHtml(getString(R.string.html)));
njzk2
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0

You can use TextWatcher for TextView, is more flexible than ClickLinstener (not best or worse, only more one way).

holder.bt_foo_ex.addTextChangedListener(new TextWatcher() {

        @Override
        public void onTextChanged(CharSequence s, int start, int before, int count) {
            // code during!

        }

        @Override
        public void beforeTextChanged(CharSequence s, int start, int count, int after) {
            // code before!

        }

        @Override
        public void afterTextChanged(Editable s) {
            // code after!

        }
    });