What's the best way to limit text length of EditText in Android

Question

What\'s the best way to limit the text length of an EditText in Android?

Is there a way to do this via xml?

Answer 1

Due to goto10's observation, I put together the following code to protected against loosing other filters with setting the max length:

/**
 * This sets the maximum length in characters of an EditText view. Since the
 * max length must be done with a filter, this method gets the current
 * filters. If there is already a length filter in the view, it will replace
 * it, otherwise, it will add the max length filter preserving the other
 * 
 * @param view
 * @param length
 */
public static void setMaxLength(EditText view, int length) {
    InputFilter curFilters[];
    InputFilter.LengthFilter lengthFilter;
    int idx;

    lengthFilter = new InputFilter.LengthFilter(length);

    curFilters = view.getFilters();
    if (curFilters != null) {
        for (idx = 0; idx < curFilters.length; idx++) {
            if (curFilters[idx] instanceof InputFilter.LengthFilter) {
                curFilters[idx] = lengthFilter;
                return;
            }
        }

        // since the length filter was not part of the list, but
        // there are filters, then add the length filter
        InputFilter newFilters[] = new InputFilter[curFilters.length + 1];
        System.arraycopy(curFilters, 0, newFilters, 0, curFilters.length);
        newFilters[curFilters.length] = lengthFilter;
        view.setFilters(newFilters);
    } else {
        view.setFilters(new InputFilter[] { lengthFilter });
    }
}