Working With Text Controls in Mono for Android

Introduction

In this article we are going to see how we can create a number of different Text controls in your Android application. We can configure, style, and manipulate the controls in a variety of ways; we have so many useful attributes we can use within the application to change the style, position etc.

Learn from the basic text controls to your layout files, generally we have four types of Text Control's in Android:

1. TextView
2. EditText
3. AutoCompleteTextView
4. MultiCompleteTextView

TextView

TextView controls are usually included as part of your Activity's layout resource file. TextView has an interesting feature which is that it can automatically create a link based on the content of the Text; if the Text is an URL, an e-mail address or a phone number then when the user clicks on the textview the default intent launches whether it is the web browser or the dialer.
The property which we use for the linking is: android:autoLink=""

Lets create the application to understand TextView

• First create a new android application
  
  
   
  
   
• Go to Main.axml in Resources/Layout and do this changes
  
  
  
  
  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
  <LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
      android:orientation="vertical"
      android:layout_width="fill_parent"
      android:layout_height="fill_parent"
      >
    <TextView
        android:layout_width="fill_parent"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:text="You can create a number of different Text controls in your Android application.
                           you can configure, style, and manipulate the controls in a variety of ways, we have so many useful attributes which
                           we can use within the application to change the style, position etc."
        android:textColor="#ff0fffff"
      />
    <TextView
        android:layout_width="fill_parent"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:text="TextView controls are usually included as part of your Activity's layout resource file
                           TextView have an interesting feature which is automatically create the link based on the content of the Text if
                           its is an URL, an e-mail or a phone number so that when the user clicks on the textview the default intent whether it is the web browser or the dialer launches."
        android:textColor="#ff000fff"
      />
  </LinearLayout>
  
  In the above code you see android:text property which is used to insert the text in normal textview and the another property android:textColor used to change the color of text.
  
  Output
  
  
  
  
  As I said about android:autoLink property we used with textview to detect whether it is a web, email, phone and address information. like if I write any website url or any phone number in textview and android:autoLink="all" property was not used with the textview than the url shows as simple text and if I use android:autoLink="all" property than it will automatically shows as a clickable link.
  
  Change the Main.axml like below to see the effect of android:autoLink="all" property:
  
  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
  <LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
      android:orientation="vertical"
      android:layout_width="fill_parent"
      android:layout_height="fill_parent"
      >
    <TextView
        android:layout_width="fill_parent"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:text="You can create a number of different Text controls in your Android application."
      />
    <TextView
        android:layout_width="fill_parent"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:text="http://monodroidapp.blogspot.in/"
        android:autoLink="all"
      />
    <TextView
        android:layout_width="fill_parent"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:text="2 659-697-0000"
        android:autoLink="all"
      />
  </LinearLayout>
  
  
  
  
  
  

EditText

EditText is a subclass of the TextView class, it is functionally rich and customizable and enables users to edit text, it is like the TextBox.

Lets create the application to understand EditText

• First create a new android application
   
• Go to Main.axml in Resources/Layout and do this changes
  
  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
  <LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
      android:orientation="vertical"
      android:layout_width="fill_parent"
      android:layout_height="fill_parent"
      >
    <EditText
       android:layout_width="fill_parent"
       android:layout_height="wrap_content"
       android:capitalize="characters"
       android:autoText="true"
    />
    <EditText
      android:layout_width="fill_parent"
      android:layout_height="wrap_content"
      android:capitalize="words"
      android:autoText="true"
    />
    <EditText
      android:layout_width="fill_parent"
      android:layout_height="wrap_content"
      android:capitalize="none"
      android:autoText="true"
    />
    <EditText
      android:layout_width="fill_parent"
      android:layout_height="wrap_content"
      android:password="true"
    />
  </LinearLayout>

In above code you see we use three types of properties autoText, capitalize and password same as android provides many other properties like singleLine etc. But these three are the main which is used with EditText:

1. autoText : It is used to make the EditText in such manner that it is able to correct the common spelling mistakes. you will see the effect of autoText  property in below images with the capitalize property of EditText, the possible correct matching spelling will comes acording to the text which you entered. 
    
2. capitalize : This is used to specify the capitalization condition of the text. It further have three condition:
   
   --characters : When you set capitalize property as characters, then all the characters or words which you enter will shows in upper case.

--words : When you set capitalize property as words, then the first character of each words will shows in upper case and rest in lower case.

--none : When you set capitalize property as none, then the all the characters or words which you enter will shows in lower case.

3. password : password property is used to make a password type EditText or TextBox.        Means the typed characters are displayed as bullets (on Windows) or asterisks.

AutoCompleteTextView

An autocompletetextview is an editable text view that shows completion suggestions automatically while the user is typing. We can show string items in autocompletetextview. So that items will display according to the characters we give. 

MultiCompleteTextView

We can override the MultiAutoCompleteTextView and add the needed implementation of the default textview, it works the same way as the AutoCompleteTextView except you can add a Tokenizer that parses the text and allows you to suggest where to start suggesting words.