How to achieve chat screen type soft keyboard behaviour?

Question

I am trying to achieve a specific keyboard behaviour in a sample chat app in which when user opens keyboard the RecyclerView goes up with the keyboard but only if the last chat visible is visible.

Example: In WhatsApp open keyboard when last message is visible, the list will go up with the keyboard in order to stay visible to the user. Now scroll up a little and then open keyboard, now the list will stay as it is and it won't go up with the keyboard.

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 18 '18 at 11:40

For achieving the behaviour of scrolling the list upside along with keyboard, I derived the solution from here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/34103263/1739882

And to add custom behaviour that decides whether to scroll the list or not I fetched the last visible item with this:

linearLayoutManager.findLastVisibleItemPosition()

and used a flag to handle the scenario. Here is the complete code:

//Setup editText behavior for opening soft keyboard
    activityChatHeadBinding.edtMsg.setOnTouchListener((v, event) -> {
        InputMethodManager keyboard = (InputMethodManager) getApplicationContext().getSystemService(Context.INPUT_METHOD_SERVICE);
        if (keyboard != null) {
            LinearLayoutManager linearLayoutManager = (LinearLayoutManager) activityChatHeadBinding.recyclerView.getLayoutManager();
            isScrollToLastRequired = linearLayoutManager.findLastVisibleItemPosition() == chatNewAdapter.getItemCount() - 1;
            keyboard.showSoftInput(findViewById(R.id.layout_send_msg), InputMethodManager.SHOW_FORCED);
        }
        return false;
    });

//Executes recycler view scroll if required.
activityChatHeadBinding.recyclerView.addOnLayoutChangeListener((v, left, top, right, bottom, oldLeft, oldTop, oldRight, oldBottom) -> {
            if (bottom < oldBottom && isScrollToLastRequired) {
                activityChatHeadBinding.recyclerView.postDelayed(() -> activityChatHeadBinding.recyclerView.scrollToPosition(
                        activityChatHeadBinding.recyclerView.getAdapter().getItemCount() - 1), 100);
            }
        });

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 19 '18 at 05:29

1

You can directly add windowSoftInputMode in your Manifest file inside the activity tag like this :-

<activity android:name=".ui.chat.ChatActivity"
        android:windowSoftInputMode="adjustResize|stateAlwaysHidden"/>

If any query,you can ask.

answered Sep 19 '18 at 05:29

Abhishek Sharma

271
2
11

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Sep 19 '18 at 05:32

0

Just add

android:windowSoftInputMode = "adjustResize"

inside your activity tag in the manifest.

answered Sep 19 '18 at 05:32

Anubhav Malik

242
7
13

How to achieve chat screen type soft keyboard behaviour?

3 Answers3