ListView items focus behaviour

Question

I'm trying to create a ListView (with custom CursorAdapter) of EditText items such that EditTexts appear uneditable at first and become editable upon long click. Then the user would edit EditText contents and EditText would save changes to db upon losing focus. However I've run into a really nasty behaviour that prevents me from doing this.

1) I've set my EditTexts to android:focusable="false" and android:focusableInTouchMode="false" in XML.

2) I've created an OnItemLongClickListener in my ListActivity that does the following:

public boolean onItemLongClick(AdapterView<?> parent, View view, int position, long id)
{
    Log.d("NLAc", "longClick called");
    EditText et = (EditText) view.findViewById(R.id.etFolderName);
    et.setFocusable(true);
    et.setFocusableInTouchMode(true);
    return true;
}

3) And when I create views in my adapter I attach the following focus change listener:

public void onFocusChange(View v, boolean hasFocus) 
{
    if (hasFocus)
{
    EditText et = (EditText)v;
    Log.d(TAG, "hasFocus true called " + et.getText());
    et.setText("focused");
    et.setSelection(et.length());
}
else
{
    EditText et = (EditText)v;
    Log.d(TAG, "hasFocus false called " + et.getText());
    et.setText("unfocused");
    et.setFocusableInTouchMode(false);
            //TODO Save to DB
}

}

What happens is that when I long click the very first item I get the following in the log:

longClick called

hasFocus true called item1

hasFocus false called focused

If I remove the line setting focusable to false (et.setFocusableInTouchMode(false);) I get another hasFocus true called unfocused. Apparently things go like this:

1) EditText gets focus when set focusable

2) LinearLayour containing my ListView loses focus and calls internal unFocus() on all it's children including my EditText

3) EditText loses focus

4) EditText gets focus - for whatever reason now.

This behaviour prevents me from disabling EditText upon losing focus or making it unfocusable until the next long click comes through which is what I want. Can anyone suggest what I may be missing? Or explain this behaviour? Any solutions appreciated.

Answer 1

I was able to make some progress by using two views on top of each other. I'm using a TextView for unfocused display, and I hide it and show an EditText instead on long clicked. But that didn't really help at first with ListView's really weird focus handling until I've experimented with android:descendantFocusability setting defined for ViewGroups. After I've set it to ViewGroup.FOCUS_AFTER_DESCENDANTS it's behaviour became much more predictable, at least for me.

Answer 2

OK. Here is your code. hope it suits your needs or at least that's what I've gotten from your post :)

---

import android.app.Activity;
import android.content.Context;
import android.os.Bundle;
import android.text.InputFilter;
import android.text.Spanned;
import android.util.Log;
import android.view.*;
import android.widget.*;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;

public class EditListActivity extends Activity {


    @Override
    public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        LinearLayout ll = new LinearLayout(this);
        LinearLayout.LayoutParams lp1 = new LinearLayout.LayoutParams(
                LinearLayout.LayoutParams.WRAP_CONTENT,
                LinearLayout.LayoutParams.WRAP_CONTENT);
        ll.setLayoutParams(lp1);
        ll.setOrientation(1);
        ListView lv = new ListView(this);
        MyListAdapter adapter = new MyListAdapter(this, null);
        lv.setAdapter(adapter);
        ll.addView(lv);
        setContentView(ll);

    }

    @Override
    protected void onDestroy() {
        super.onDestroy();
    }


    class MyListAdapter extends BaseAdapter implements View.OnLongClickListener, View.OnFocusChangeListener {
        private final String TAG = ListActivity.class.getName();
        List<String> stringsarray;
       private Context context;

        public MyListAdapter(Context context, List<String> phonebook) {
            this.stringsarray = new ArrayList<String>();

            this.stringsarray.add("test1");
            this.stringsarray.add("test2");
            this.stringsarray.add("test3");
            Log.d(TAG, "created list adapter");
            this.setContext(context);
        }

        public int getCount() {
            return this.stringsarray.size();
        }

        public String getItem(int position) {
            return this.stringsarray.get(position);
        }

        public long getItemId(int position) {
            return position;
        }


        public View getView(final int position, View convertView, ViewGroup parent) {
            LinearLayout rl = new LinearLayout(getContext());

            rl.setOrientation(1);
            EditText text = new EditText(getContext());

            text.setOnLongClickListener(this);
            text.setOnFocusChangeListener(this);
            text.setText(this.stringsarray.get(position));

            LinearLayout.LayoutParams lp = new LinearLayout.LayoutParams(
                    LinearLayout.LayoutParams.FILL_PARENT,
                    LinearLayout.LayoutParams.WRAP_CONTENT);

            text.setFocusable(true);
            rl.addView(text, lp);
            return rl;
        }

        public void onFocusChange(View view, boolean b) {
            EditText et = (EditText) view;
                et.setFilters(new InputFilter[]{
                        new InputFilter() {
                            public CharSequence filter(CharSequence src, int start,
                                                       int end, Spanned dst, int dstart, int dend) {
                                return src.length() < 1 ? dst.subSequence(dstart, dend) : "";
                            }
                        }
                });
            if (b) {
                Log.d(TAG, "hasFocus true called " + et.getText());
                et.setText("focused");
                et.setSelection(et.length());

            } else {

                Log.d(TAG, "hasFocus false called " + et.getText());
                et.setText("unfocused");
                //TODO Save to DB
            }
        }

        public boolean onLongClick(View view) {
            getWindow().setSoftInputMode(WindowManager.LayoutParams.SOFT_INPUT_STATE_ALWAYS_VISIBLE);
            final EditText et = (EditText) view;
            et.setFilters(new InputFilter[]{
                        new InputFilter() {
                            public CharSequence filter(CharSequence src, int start,
                                                       int end, Spanned dst, int dstart, int dend) {
                               return src;
                            }
                        }
                });
            et.setText("editable");
            Log.d(TAG, "on long click called " + et.getText());
            et.requestFocus();
            et.setFocusableInTouchMode(true);

            return true;
        }

        public Context getContext() {
            return context;
        }

        public void setContext(Context context) {
            this.context = context;
        }
    }

}

---

have fun.