How to highlight TextView in Android

Question

I would like to highlight a TextView and achieve the design shown below. Does anyone know how to achieve this using a TextView? I took this screenshot from an existing Android app.

enter image description here

By using this code I get results shown below, which is not what I want:

sp.setSpan(new BackgroundColorSpan(color), start, length, Spanned.SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE);

enter image description here

This has already been answered here http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2120035/highlight-text-in-textview-or-webview — Bidhan, May 27 '15 at 14:02

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered May 27 '15 at 13:53

3

You need to use a Spannable String:

TextView textView = (TextView)findViewById(R.id.textView1);
String  text = "Test"; 
Spannable spanText = Spannable.Factory.getInstance().newSpannable(text);
spanText.setSpan(new BackgroundColorSpan(0xFFFFFF00), 14, 19, Spannable.SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE);
textView.setText(spanText);

Try this. This will work.

answered May 27 '15 at 13:53

Yash Sampat

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Please check my updated question, BackgroundColorSpan results in something different from what I really want. – Tinashe May 28 '15 at 06:14
What about letting the style apart from the UI? – joninx May 28 '15 at 06:16
@Tinashe Did you ever get an answer? The answers above do not address your question about the needed white space. I have the same problem and have not been able to find an answer. – Bob Lissner Dec 03 '16 at 00:10
@BobLissner Unfortunately I could not find an answer. But I assume this can only be achieved with css – Tinashe Dec 19 '16 at 05:45

score 1 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:05

If I understand you correctly, you want to highlight the text with a light color? If that's the case, then simply change the transparency of the color. For example: change the first two FF of 0xFFFFFF00 to something like 80(50 % transparency). So, it would look like 0x80FFFF00.

TextView textView = (TextView)findViewById(R.id.textView1);
String  text = "Your String"; 
Spannable spanText = Spannable.Factory.getInstance().newSpannable(text);
spanText.setSpan(new BackgroundColorSpan(0x80FFFF00), 14, 19,Spannable.SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE);
textView.setText(spanText);

Here's a relevant thread regarding hex color transparency.

this is way better than what I had, Thanks a lot. but still it does not leave the white spaces in-between the sentences as it is in the image. — Tinashe, May 28 '15 at 07:04

How to highlight TextView in Android

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