Underline and change text color in Android TextView

Question

I'm working on a kind of typing game on Android. It has a Text View with the sentence the user has to type in. Each time the current word the user has to type in will be underlined, once user finished a word, that word will change color based on the time it took to type (e.g. >5 seconds = red, <5 seconds is green).

My question is how can I underline and change the color of the words in the Text View so that when I underline a new word, it will also keep the color of the previous ones?

Currently I'm doing some thing like this every time I move to the next word

String texts = myTextView.getText().toString();
// put the next word to be underlined between <u> </u> tags
myTextView.setText(Html.fromHtml(texts));

As you can see, it will underline the next word but all of the colors of the previous words will be lost but I want to keep those.

Thanks for your help!

Edit: My text is already fixed and the user has to type in the words they see. For example, I have a sentence "Sample Sentence Hello". I want "Sample" to be underlined at first, then "Sentence" underlined, "Sample" changed red or green, then "Hello" underlined and "Sample" and "Sentence" each changed to red or green depending on the time it took the user to type each word.

You should go with Spannable class. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3282940/set-color-of-textview-span-in-android — K. Gandhi, Jun 21 '16 at 04:00
@K.Gandhi Thanks, as I see it, I have to store the start-end indices of each word to use Spannable. Is that right? — Nguyen, Jun 21 '16 at 04:15
yes, you can go with that. It's just basic idea... you should dig and get it work more easily. — K. Gandhi, Jun 21 '16 at 04:50

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 21 '16 at 04:09

1

Try this way to create underline

<resources>
    <string name="your_string">
        This is an <u>underline</u>.
    </string>
</resources>

Java

TextView tv = (TextView) view.findViewById(R.id.tv);
SpannableString content = new SpannableString("Content");
content.setSpan(new UnderlineSpan(), 0, content.length(), 0);
tv.setText(content);

OR using paint

txt.setPaintFlags(txt.getPaintFlags() | Paint.UNDERLINE_TEXT_FLAG);

answered Jun 21 '16 at 04:09

Aditya Vyas-Lakhan

13,409
16
61
96

Thanks. I'm getting something but it's still not what I have in mind. I want to underline/change color only 1 word from the texts at a time and keep the changed color of the previous words when moving on to the next ones. – Nguyen Jun 21 '16 at 04:19
i suggest that take a seperate word as string or make array then apply color using spannable – Aditya Vyas-Lakhan Jun 21 '16 at 04:27
Yes, I think I'll split the sentence into an array is the best way I can do right now. Thanks! – Nguyen Jun 21 '16 at 04:41
Glad to help you and accept my answer if it helped – Aditya Vyas-Lakhan Jun 21 '16 at 04:44

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 21 '16 at 04:02

0

You can set it programatically to TextView.

like in if else condition .

if(time > 5){    
   String texts = myTextView.getText().toString();
   myTextView.setText(texts);
   myTextView.setPaintFlags(textview.getPaintFlags() | Paint.UNDERLINE_TEXT_FLAG);
   mTextView.settextColor(Color.parsecolor("#FF0000"));

}else {
   String texts = myTextView.getText().toString();
   myTextView.setText(texts);
   myTextView.setPaintFlags(textview.getPaintFlags() | Paint.UNDERLINE_TEXT_FLAG);
   mTextView.settextColor(Color.parsecolor("#0000FF"));
}

answered Jun 21 '16 at 04:02

Harshad Pansuriya

20,189
8
67
95

Thanks mate but how can I underline and change the color 1 word at a time? For example, my Text View holds the sentence "Sample Sentence", I want it to first have the word "Sample" underlined and then "Sentence" underlined and "Sample" changes color to red or green. – Nguyen Jun 21 '16 at 04:12
@Nguyen you `text` is `static` or it can be written by `User`. – Harshad Pansuriya Jun 21 '16 at 04:16
@Nguyen visit this it may be help you . http://stackoverflow.com/questions/13238298/android-change-underline-color-from-an-edittext-dynamically – Harshad Pansuriya Jun 21 '16 at 04:25

Underline and change text color in Android TextView

2 Answers2