Andorid TextView, Linkify US phone number in every language

Question

I have a text containing us phone numbers. I would like to make them clickable whatever is the phone language. I investigated how the autolink worked and found the Linkify.addLinks method I tried to use on a custom TextView.

public class PhoneNumberLinkTextView extends android.support.v7.widget.AppCompatTextView {

    public PhoneNumberLinkTextView(Context context) {
        super(context);
    }

    public PhoneNumberLinkTextView(Context context, @Nullable AttributeSet attrs) {
        super(context, attrs);
    }

    public PhoneNumberLinkTextView(Context context, @Nullable AttributeSet attrs, int defStyleAttr) {
        super(context, attrs, defStyleAttr);
    }

    public void setUSNumberText(CharSequence text) {
        SpannableStringBuilder spanText = new SpannableStringBuilder(text);
        if (addLinks(spanText)) {
            setText(spanText);
        } else {
            setText(text);
        }
    }

    public boolean addLinks(@NonNull SpannableStringBuilder text) {
        ArrayList<LinkSpec> links = new ArrayList<>();

        gatherTelLinks(links, text);

        if (links.isEmpty()) {
            return false;
        }

        Object[] spans = text.getSpans(0, text.length(), Object.class);
        final int count = spans.length;
        for (int i = 0; i < count; i++) {
            text.removeSpan(spans[i]);
        }

        for (LinkSpec link: links) {
            applyLink(link.url, link.start, link.end, text);
        }

        return true;
    }

    private void gatherTelLinks(ArrayList<LinkSpec> links, Spannable s) {
        PhoneNumberUtil phoneUtil = PhoneNumberUtil.getInstance();
        Iterable<PhoneNumberMatch> matches = phoneUtil.findNumbers(s.toString(),
                Locale.US.getCountry(), PhoneNumberUtil.Leniency.POSSIBLE, Long.MAX_VALUE);
        for (PhoneNumberMatch match : matches) {
            LinkSpec spec = new LinkSpec();
            spec.url = "tel:" + normalizeNumber(match.rawString());
            spec.start = match.start();
            spec.end = match.end();
            links.add(spec);
        }
    }

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

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

    /**
     * Normalize a phone number by removing the characters other than digits. If
     * the given number has keypad letters, the letters will be converted to
     * digits first.
     *
     * @param phoneNumber the number to be normalized.
     * @return the normalized number.
     */
    public String normalizeNumber(String phoneNumber) {
        if (TextUtils.isEmpty(phoneNumber)) {
            return "";
        }

        StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
        int len = phoneNumber.length();
        for (int i = 0; i < len; i++) {
            char c = phoneNumber.charAt(i);
            // Character.digit() supports ASCII and Unicode digits (fullwidth, Arabic-Indic, etc.)
            int digit = Character.digit(c, 10);
            if (digit != -1) {
                sb.append(digit);
            } else if (sb.length() == 0 && c == '+') {
                sb.append(c);
            } else if ((c >= 'a' && c <= 'z') || (c >= 'A' && c <= 'Z')) {
                return normalizeNumber(PhoneNumberUtils.convertKeypadLettersToDigits(phoneNumber));
            }
        }
        return sb.toString();
    }

    class LinkSpec {
        String url;
        int start;
        int end;
    }
}

This code is currently visually working. My US number is formatted as I expect it to be but my phone number is not clickable.

I then tried to add a setMovementMethod(LinkMovementMethod.getInstance()) after my setText() but this time I lost my US number formatted as a phone number.

Does anyone know how I can achieve what I'm trying to do ?

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Jan 05 '18 at 08:09

I ended solving my problem by replacing URLSpan by a custom class extending ClickableSpan.

private class USNumberSpan extends ClickableSpan {

        private String url;

        USNumberSpan(String url) {
            this.url = url;
        }

        @Override
        public void onClick(View widget) {
            Uri uri = Uri.parse(url);
            Context context = widget.getContext();
            Intent intent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW, uri);
            intent.putExtra(Browser.EXTRA_APPLICATION_ID, context.getPackageName());
            try {
                context.startActivity(intent);
            } catch (ActivityNotFoundException e) {
                Log.w("URLSpan", "Activity was not found for intent, " + intent.toString(), e);
            }
        }
    }

I did not find out why this is working whereas URLSpan is not but I'm glad it worked.

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 05 '19 at 12:47

I've found a Kotlin answer (by the user Iliya Mashin) with a Pattern for any type of numbers on this link: android:autoLink for phone numbers doesn't always work

I adapted it for Java and specified at least 4 numbers in the end (so it won't linkify some zipcodes ending with 3 numbers "xxxxx-xxx"), so, if you don't want this specific limitation, just remove the "{4,}" in the end of the expression).

LinkifyCompat.addLinks(textView, Linkify.ALL); // This will use the usual linkify for any other format
Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("([\\d|\\(][\\h|\\(\\d{3}\\)|\\.|\\-|\\d]{4,}\\d{4,})", Pattern.CASE_INSENSITIVE);
    LinkifyCompat.addLinks(textView, pattern, "tel://", null, null, null); // this adds the format for all kinds of phone number

If you want to link just the numbers, remove the first line (the one with "Linkify.ALL").

Andorid TextView, Linkify US phone number in every language

2 Answers2