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. The reasoning is that I find it too easy to click on a phone number accidentally, so I'm going to intercept the click with a confirmation Dialog and then call.

Is there an easy way to still make the phone number in my TextView look like a normal clickable link? I poked around the Android source code, but couldn't find any particular style for me to reference.

user_3940133 · Answer

With kotlin extension function (if you don't need the click effect as on a real link)

fun TextView.hyperlinkStyle() {
    setText(
        SpannableString(text).apply {
            setSpan(
                URLSpan(""),
                0,
                length,
                Spanned.SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE
            )
        },
        TextView.BufferType.SPANNABLE
    )
}

How to use

yourTextView.hyperlinkStyle()

user_1993661 · Answer

Simply underline it:

val myText = "Text to be underlined"
textView.text = Html.fromHtml("$myText")

or with kotlin extensions:

fun TextView.underline() {
    text = Html.fromHtml("${text}")
}

usage:

textView.text = myText
textView.underline()

More ways to style text in android here: https://medium.com/androiddevelopers/spantastic-text-styling-with-spans-17b0c16b4568

Format TextView to look like link

7 Answers