Question

I am looking to implement both phone pad and keypad in Android.As, per my requirement when the EditText is selected a default phone pad should be shown. But the user must be able to input alphabets also. Please suggest me a way to implement this.

 <EditText
                android:id="@+id/editTextref1"
                android:layout_width="210dp"
                android:layout_height="45dp"
                android:layout_alignParentRight="true"
                android:layout_marginTop="10dp"
                android:ellipsize="start"
                android:hint="@string/custom1"
                android:imeOptions="actionNext|actionDone"
                 android:inputType="text"
                android:nextFocusDown="@+id/editTextref2"
                android:shadowDy="10"
                android:textColor="#383838"
                android:textSize="14sp"
                android:textStyle="bold"
                android:maxLength="15"
                android:typeface="serif" />

Answer 1

I would like to make an assumption that it’s impossible to do that in a simple and elegant way. The problem is that you input type is InputType.TYPE_CLASS_TEXT and it cannot be changed to InputType.TYPE_CLASS_NUMBER because you need to input letters as well.

The problem is that input method checks the type of input and gives you the appropriate keyboard with numbers or alphabet depending on the type of the field input type. If you ask input method to give you number keyboard and you have your EditText in focus, you cannot force the input method to switch to alphabet keyboard in your code. I may be wrong but this is what I think.

The question is whether you can ask any third party input method to give you different keyboard while editing text – I think you cannot do this in your code. Input method will give you numbers or alphabet depending on your EditText but you cannot switch them dynamically because input method is not aware of your design issues. The only way you can do this is to make your own input method that allows you to switch numeric and alphabet keyboards dynamically.