Stopping text from splitting to multiple lines on the periods in web addresses

Question

I have an Android TextView displaying some text, and it's multi-line. However, in the text, I sometimes have domain names; how can I stop the TextView from splitting the lines up on the periods in them?

Is there a unicode non-breaking-period, for example?

---

To see the issue in action in wrapping an email address, run
android create project --target 16 --path demo --package com.example.demo --activity MainActivity
and change the text in res/layout/main.xml to "Hello World, MyActivity filler text + email foo@foo.com". That produces this output on a Galaxy S3 (API level 16):

(Adjust text as appropriate to see wrapping on devices with other screen sizes. Notably, the wrapping is done correctly in Intellij's layout preview, it's only on the device that it's faulty.)

Answer 1

TLDR;

@Matt McMinn has already shown a solution for this problem here, go grab it. I am only re-iterating that solution here.

---

Note that, this issue has already been fixed at platform level in Android 4.2.2. See the below screenshots for word wrap comparison for the same code base but different platform versions on Galaxy Nexus.

Hence, if you are not targeting older versions of Android, you may not wish to use this fix at all.

The code

MainActivity.java:

package com.example.nobr;

import android.app.Activity;
import android.os.Bundle;
import android.widget.TextView;
import android.widget.TextView.BufferType;

public class MainActivity extends Activity {

    @Override
    protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);

        TextView helloWorld = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.hello_world);
        helloWorld.setText(R.string.hello_world, BufferType.EDITABLE);

        TextView longText = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.long_text);
        longText.setText(R.string.long_text_with_url, BufferType.EDITABLE);
    }
}

activity_main.xml:

<RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="match_parent"
    android:padding="16dp" >

    <com.example.nobr.NonBreakingPeriodTextView
        android:id="@+id/hello_world"
        android:layout_width="wrap_content"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content" />

    <com.example.nobr.NonBreakingPeriodTextView
        android:id="@+id/long_text"
        android:layout_width="wrap_content"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:layout_alignLeft="@+id/hello_world"
        android:layout_below="@+id/hello_world"
        android:layout_marginTop="20dp" />

</RelativeLayout>

NonBreakingPeriodTextView.java:

package com.example.nobr;

import android.content.Context;
import android.graphics.Paint;
import android.text.Editable;
import android.util.AttributeSet;
import android.util.Log;
import android.widget.TextView;

public class NonBreakingPeriodTextView extends TextView {
    private static final String TAG = "NonBreakingPeriodTextView";

    public NonBreakingPeriodTextView(Context context) {
        super(context);
    }

    public NonBreakingPeriodTextView(Context context, AttributeSet attrs) {
        super(context, attrs);
    }

    @Override
    protected void onSizeChanged(int w, int h, int oldw, int oldh) {
        Editable editable = getEditableText();
        if (editable == null) {
            Log.d(TAG, "non-editable text");
            return;
        }
        int width = getWidth() - getPaddingLeft() - getPaddingRight();
        if (width == 0) {
            Log.d(TAG, "zero-length text");
            return;
        }

        Paint p = getPaint();
        float[] widths = new float[editable.length()];
        p.getTextWidths(editable.toString(), widths);
        float curWidth = 0.0f;
        int lastWSPos = -1;
        int strPos = 0;
        final char newLine = '\n';
        final String newLineStr = "\n";
        boolean reset = false;
        int insertCount = 0;

        /*
         * Traverse the string from the start position, adding each character's width to the total
         * until: 1) A whitespace character is found. In this case, mark the whitespace position. If
         * the width goes over the max, this is where the newline will be inserted. 2) A newline
         * character is found. This resets the curWidth counter. curWidth > width. Replace the
         * whitespace with a newline and reset the counter.
         */

        while (strPos < editable.length()) {
            curWidth += widths[strPos];

            char curChar = editable.charAt(strPos);

            if (curChar == newLine) {
                reset = true;
            } else if (Character.isWhitespace(curChar)) {
                lastWSPos = strPos;
            } else if (curWidth > width && lastWSPos >= 0) {
                editable.replace(lastWSPos, lastWSPos + 1, newLineStr);
                insertCount++;
                strPos = lastWSPos;
                lastWSPos = -1;
                reset = true;
            }

            if (reset) {
                curWidth = 0.0f;
                reset = false;
            }

            strPos++;
        }

        if (insertCount != 0) {
            setText(editable);
        }
    }
}

The result

On Android 4.1.2 (Galaxy Nexus)

On Android 2.3.3 (AVD, Nexus One clone)

Hope this helps.

Answer 2

To tell android to parse the domain links in the TextView use this code in the TextView code block:

android:autoLink="web"

This will show the domain names as links in the app and wont split the lines.

Answer 3

Use this :

android:singleLine="true" in xml

Answer 4

for me didn't work solution of @ozbek respectively @Matt McMinn, I had to change line

else if(Character.isWhitespace(curChar))

for

} else if (curChar == '\u00A0') {

but otherwise great solution, thanks