Format TextView to look like link

Question

I\'ve been using the android:autoLink just fine for formatting links and such, but I need to use android:onClick so I can\'t use that in this case.

Answer 1

This is the shortest solution:

final CharSequence text = tv.getText();
final SpannableString spannableString = new SpannableString( text );
spannableString.setSpan(new URLSpan(""), 0, spannableString.length(), Spanned.SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE);
tv.setText(spannableString, TextView.BufferType.SPANNABLE);

Sadly, the effect of clicking doesn't show up as being clicked on a real url link, but you can overcome it like so:

    final CharSequence text = tv.getText();
    final SpannableString notClickedString = new SpannableString(text);
    notClickedString.setSpan(new URLSpan(""), 0, notClickedString.length(), Spanned.SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE);
    tv.setText(notClickedString, TextView.BufferType.SPANNABLE);
    final SpannableString clickedString = new SpannableString(notClickedString);
    clickedString.setSpan(new BackgroundColorSpan(Color.GRAY), 0, notClickedString.length(),
            Spanned.SPAN_INCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE);
    tv.setOnTouchListener(new OnTouchListener() {
        @Override
        public boolean onTouch(final View v, final MotionEvent event) {
            switch (event.getAction()) {
            case MotionEvent.ACTION_DOWN:
                tv.setText(clickedString);
                break;
            case MotionEvent.ACTION_UP:
                tv.setText(notClickedString, TextView.BufferType.SPANNABLE);
                v.performClick();
                break;
            case MotionEvent.ACTION_CANCEL:
                tv.setText(notClickedString, TextView.BufferType.SPANNABLE);
                break;
            }
            return true;
        }
    });

Another solution is to use Html.fromHtml(...) , where the text inside has links tags ("") .

If you wish for another solution, check this post.