Android copy/paste from clipboard manager

Question

Is it possible to send past command so that it pastes text into currently focused edit text. Scenario:

1. Background service listening for notification (done)

Answer 1

If you just want to "copy and paste" some code into your app, you can use the following.

#Copy

String textToCopy = etCodeWindow.getText().toString();

ClipboardManager clipboard = (ClipboardManager) context.getSystemService(Context.CLIPBOARD_SERVICE);
ClipData clip = ClipData.newPlainText(null, textToCopy);
if (clipboard == null) return;
clipboard.setPrimaryClip(clip);

#Paste

Get the text to paste

ClipboardManager clipboard = (ClipboardManager) context.getSystemService(Context.CLIPBOARD_SERVICE);
if (clipboard == null) return;
ClipData clip = clipboard.getPrimaryClip();
if (clip == null) return;
ClipData.Item item = clip.getItemAt(0);
if (item == null) return;
CharSequence textToPaste = item.getText();
if (textToPaste == null) return;

or

ClipboardManager clipboard = (ClipboardManager) getSystemService(Context.CLIPBOARD_SERVICE);
try {
    CharSequence textToPaste = clipboard.getPrimaryClip().getItemAt(0).getText();
} catch (Exception e) {
    return;
}

or the same in Kotlin:

val clipboard = (getSystemService(Context.CLIPBOARD_SERVICE)) as? ClipboardManager
val textToPaste = clipboard?.primaryClip?.getItemAt(0)?.text ?: return false

Inserting it at the cursor position

If there is a selection then the selection will be replaced with the paste text.

int start = Math.max(myEditText.getSelectionStart(), 0);
int end = Math.max(myEditText.getSelectionEnd(), 0);
myEditText.getText().replace(Math.min(start, end), Math.max(start, end),
            textToPaste, 0, textToPaste.length());

#Notes

• This answer assumes that you are no longer supporting pre-API 11. If you are then see the edit history.
• Import android.content.ClipboardManager and android.content.ClipData.
• I used to just get the paste text in a one liner until I discovered that ClipData was giving a NPE crash sometimes. Now I would either use a try/catch block or check more carefully for nulls.