Android Chat application smiley

Question

I am developing a chat application. For smileys I have used image buttons. But the problem is that I don't know how to insert the smileys to the text control after the chat messages, similar to this:

How to do it through code? Please guide me.

Answer 1

You can achieve this using ImageSpan objects. The TextViews and EditTexts use Spanned/Spannable objects to store the entered text content, not just mere java Strings. On these Spanned/Spannable objects you can define spans for sections on the text that modifies the way that those sections are shown. So you can display a text in bold, italics, etc. and you can also display images in place of certain sections.

This way you can search for a ":-)" pattern in the entered text, and slap an ImageSpan on it displaying a smiley. Check the docs http://developer.android.com/reference/android/text/style/ImageSpan.html.

Answer 2

We cannot add image directly to editText and textView. for that we have to make a spannable text, and my code creates a spanned text and now you can set it to textView/editText.

  ImageGetter imageGetter = new ImageGetter() 
                {
                    public Drawable getDrawable(String source) {
                        Drawable d = getResources().getDrawable(R.drawable.e001);
                        d.setBounds(0, 0, d.getIntrinsicWidth(), d.getIntrinsicHeight());
                        return d;
                    }
                };

                Spanned cs = Html.fromHtml("<img src='" + getResources().getDrawable(R.drawable.e001) + "'/>", imageGetter, null);


            yourTextView.setText(cs);