redon13
6/2/2016 - 6:56 PM

Using Spans to Style Sections of Text Spans come in really handy when we want to apply styles to portions of text within the same TextView.

Using Spans to Style Sections of Text Spans come in really handy when we want to apply styles to portions of text within the same TextView. We can change the text color, change the typeface, add an underline, etc, and apply these to only certain portions of the text. The full list of spans shows all the available options. As an example, let's say we have a single TextView where we want the first word to show up in red and the second word to have a strikethrough:

Using Spans.java
content_copyfile_download
String firstWord = "Hello";
String secondWord = "World!";

TextView tvHelloWorld = (TextView)findViewById(R.id.tvHelloWorld);

// Create a span that will make the text red
ForegroundColorSpan redForegroundColorSpan = new ForegroundColorSpan(
        getResources().getColor(android.R.color.holo_red_dark));

// Use a SpannableStringBuilder so that both the text and the spans are mutable
SpannableStringBuilder ssb = new SpannableStringBuilder(firstWord);

// Apply the color span
ssb.setSpan(
        redForegroundColorSpan,            // the span to add
        0,                                 // the start of the span (inclusive)
        ssb.length(),                      // the end of the span (exclusive)
        Spanned.SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE); // behavior when text is later inserted into the SpannableStringBuilder
                                           // SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE means to not extend the span when additional
                                           // text is added in later

// Add a blank space
ssb.append(" ");

// Create a span that will strikethrough the text
StrikethroughSpan strikethroughSpan = new StrikethroughSpan();

// Add the secondWord and apply the strikethrough span to only the second word
ssb.append(secondWord);
ssb.setSpan(
        strikethroughSpan,
        ssb.length() - secondWord.length(),
        ssb.length(),
        Spanned.SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE);

// Set the TextView text and denote that it is Editable
// since it's a SpannableStringBuilder
tvHelloWorld.setText(ssb, TextView.BufferType.EDITABLE);