Can a TextView be selectable AND contain links?

Question

I\'ve run into a problem with TextView. I can make it selectable using setTextIsSelectable(true), but when I enable links to be clicked via s

Answer 1

I figured it out. You need to subclass LinkMovementMethod and add support for text selection. It's really unfortunate that it doesn't support it natively. I just overrode the relevant methods using the equivalent ones from the source code for ArrowKeyMovementMethod. I guess that's one benefit of Android being open source!

public class CustomMovementMethod extends LinkMovementMethod {
    @Override
    public boolean canSelectArbitrarily () {
        return true;
    }

    @Override
    public void initialize(TextView widget, Spannable text) {
        Selection.setSelection(text, text.length());
    }

    @Override
    public void onTakeFocus(TextView view, Spannable text, int dir) {
       if ((dir & (View.FOCUS_FORWARD | View.FOCUS_DOWN)) != 0) {
           if (view.getLayout() == null) {
               // This shouldn't be null, but do something sensible if it is.
               Selection.setSelection(text, text.length());
           }
       } else {
           Selection.setSelection(text, text.length());
       }
    }
}

To use it, just instantiate it directly, like so:

textView.setMovementMethod(new CustomMovementMethod());