Question

I have a requirement to build a textView which contains something like:
“Title[x]” followed by “some text” followed by “\n” followed by “Title[y]” followed by “more text” etc. giving

Title[x] some text

Title[y] more text

I need Title to be bold and to have a different color for each Title. I have 11 titles in total and up to 30 text strings to choose from and any title can have any text string. On each cycle, I will have from 1 to 6 Titles in my final resultText.
I have no problem building the textView with “known” values of x and y but, in real life, I won”t know the values until I come to build the spannable string. I don”t want to build every possible variation of strings (over 300).
I”ve tried creating all the “Title” spannables and appending them to my “result” as I create them and it works fine, but if I create them all and append them in one statement at the end I lose the Bold and Color attributes.

My main.xml has a textView with an ID of color_test.

package uk.cmj.color;

import android.app.Activity;
import android.graphics.Color;
import android.os.Bundle;
import android.text.SpannableString;
import android.text.SpannableStringBuilder;
import android.text.style.ForegroundColorSpan;
import android.text.style.StyleSpan;
import android.view.View;
import android.widget.TextView;
import android.widget.TextView.BufferType;

public class ColorActivity extends Activity {
/** Called when the activity is first created. */

private static int titleIndex = 0;
private final String[] titles = {"Title A", "Title B", "Title C"};      

@Override
public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
setContentView(R.layout.main);

// ---------------------------------------------
// THIS WORKS AND I SEE COLOR AND BOLD FOR TITLE
// ---------------------------------------------

titleIndex = 1;

SpannableStringBuilder resultText = new SpannableStringBuilder(); 
String firstTitle = titles[titleIndex]; 
SpannableString firstTitleSpannable= new SpannableString(firstTitle); 
firstTitleSpannable.setSpan(new ForegroundColorSpan(Color.rgb(155,79,25)), 0, firstTitle.length(), 0); 
firstTitleSpannable.setSpan(new StyleSpan(android.graphics.Typeface.BOLD),  0, firstTitle.length(), 0); 
resultText.append(firstTitleSpannable);

String body1 = " some text" + "\n"; 
SpannableString body1Spannable= new SpannableString(body1); 
body1Spannable.setSpan(new ForegroundColorSpan(Color.BLACK), 0, body1.length(), 0); 
resultText.append(body1Spannable); 

titleIndex = 2;

String nextTitle = titles[titleIndex]; 
SpannableString nextTitleSpannable= new SpannableString(nextTitle); 
nextTitleSpannable.setSpan(new ForegroundColorSpan(Color.rgb(155,79,25)), 0, nextTitle.length(), 0); 
nextTitleSpannable.setSpan(new StyleSpan(android.graphics.Typeface.BOLD),  0, nextTitle.length(), 0); 
resultText.append(nextTitleSpannable + "\n");

String body2 = " some different text" + "\n"; 
SpannableString body2Spannable= new SpannableString(body2); 
body1Spannable.setSpan(new ForegroundColorSpan(Color.BLACK), 0, body1.length(), 0); 
resultText.append(body2Spannable); 

TextView color_test = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.color_test); 
color_test.setText(resultText, BufferType.SPANNABLE); 

// ------------------------------------------
// THIS DOESN'T WORK AS I LOSE COLOR AND BOLD
// ------------------------------------------

titleIndex = 1;

SpannableStringBuilder resultText = new SpannableStringBuilder(); 
String firstTitle = titles[titleIndex]; 
SpannableString firstTitleSpannable= new SpannableString(firstTitle); 
firstTitleSpannable.setSpan(new ForegroundColorSpan(Color.rgb(155,79,25)), 0, firstTitle.length(), 0); 
firstTitleSpannable.setSpan(new StyleSpan(android.graphics.Typeface.BOLD),  0, firstTitle.length(), 0); 

String body1 = " some text" + "\n"; 
SpannableString body1Spannable= new SpannableString(body1); 
body1Spannable.setSpan(new ForegroundColorSpan(Color.BLACK), 0, body1.length(), 0); 
resultText.append(body1Spannable); 

titleIndex = 2;

String nextTitle = titles[titleIndex]; 
SpannableString nextTitleSpannable= new SpannableString(nextTitle); 
nextTitleSpannable.setSpan(new ForegroundColorSpan(Color.rgb(155,79,25)), 0, nextTitle.length(), 0); 
nextTitleSpannable.setSpan(new StyleSpan(android.graphics.Typeface.BOLD),  0, nextTitle.length(), 0); 

String body2 = " some different text" + "\n"; 
SpannableString body2Spannable= new SpannableString(body2); 
body1Spannable.setSpan(new ForegroundColorSpan(Color.BLACK), 0, body1.length(), 0); 
resultText.append(body2Spannable); 

resultText.append(firstTitleSpannable 
                + body1Spannable 
                + nextTitleSpannable
                + body2Spannable); 


TextView color_test = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.color_test); 
color_test.setText(resultText, BufferType.SPANNABLE); 

}
}

Answer 1

I’m not quite sure if I understand your problem correctly. But if I do, I’d write a class which contains all the attributes needed and create objects during runtime:

public class SpannableContent {
    private StringBuilder result = new StringBuilder();
    private String title1 = null;
    private String title2 = null;
    private String description = null;

    public SpannableContent(String _title1, String _title2, String _desc) {
        this.title1 = _title1;
        this.title2 = _title2;
        this.description = _desc;

        result.append(getFormatedTitle1());
        result.append(getFormatedTitle2());
        result.append(getFormatedDescription());
    }

    private String getFormatedTitle1() {
        String resString = null;
        // do whatever Spannable stuff you want to do w/ title1 here

        return resString;
    }

    private String getFormatedTitle2() {
        String resString = null;
        // do whatever Spannable stuff you want to do w/ title2 here

        return resString;
    }

    private String getFormatedDescription() {
        String resString = null;
        // do whatever Spannable stuff you want to do w/ the description here

        return resString;
    }

    public String getFinalContent() {
        return result.toString();
    }
}

Then do during runtime something like

SpannableContent spannableC = new SpannableContent(dynamicTitle1, dynamicTitle2, dynamicDesc);
resultText.append(spannableC.getFinalContent());

You could store the objects in an ArrayList of the type SpannableContent.

ArrayList<SpannableContent> spannableArrayList = new ArrayList<SpannableContent>();