Why android InputMethodManager.showSoftInput() returns false?

Question

Recently while developing an app, I faced an issue. I have searched a lot on google but couldn't find any solution. In the end I came across this Android issue tracker

To explain my issue, I have made a sample App.

Basic Working of my Sample App

1. I have a screen, which has an EditText, a Button and a RelativeLayout.
2. Width and Height of RelativeLayout is 0px. It is just a view to move focus away from EditText.
3. When App is launched focus is on RelativeLayout, not on EditText(so that there is not blinking cursor in it.)
4. When a user clicks on Button I just move focus to RelativeLayout using requestFocus() call on RelativeLayout.
5. When user taps on EditText, keyboard comes up. I can enter text in that.

What I want to achieve

1. If I change orientation of phone when keyboard is visible then after orienation changes, keyboard should stay.
2. If keyboard is visible and some other activity comes on top of it for e.g. alarm, facebook chat heads, opening something from notification area, locking unlocking device, etc.. then on returning back to sample app keyboard should be visible.

How I am achieving this

1. In onSaveInstanceState(), I check if focus is on EditText then put a boolean variable in Bundle.
2. In onStop(), I am setting a one boolean flag wasEditing = true.
3. In onRestoreInstanceState(), I checked if Bundle has flag value set in onSaveInstanceState(). If yes then I am make wasEditing = true.
4. In onResume(), I check this wasEditing and if it is true, I request focus for EditText.
5. After that I call imm.showSoftInput(mEditText, InputMethodManager.SHOW_IMPLICIT,resultRec)

Where I am getting problem
Sometimes after executing this call, Keyboard is not visible in few cases, like during orientation change.
When I put logs I have found this function is returning false
But if I make this showSoftInput() call with some delay of 100ms using mEditText.postDelayed() in onResume() everything works fine.

Question In what cases this function returns false and why delay is working?

Note Although I have solved my problem using delay, but I still want to know why it is behaving like that.

Sparry

I am having this same exact issue, and it works when there is a delay, but not I call it in the onResume method without a delay. – Fibrinolysis

Answer 1

This is a problem I ran into today as well. Of my 8 android devices only 1 has the problem and it's running Android 4.0.4.

The problem was fixed by adding

mEditText.requestFocus();
mEditText.requestFocusFromTouch();

before calling mEditText.showSoftInput(...)

You'll see the resultcode from showSoftInput is now true. I noticed that after the mEditText.requestFocus() the isFocused() was still false. Probably a bug in Android 4.0 and perhaps 4.1.

Hottempered

Adding requestFocusFromTouch() didn't solve my issue. I still get False from showSoftInput. – Sparry

Answer 2

Please call showKeyboard after your mEditText is attached to window. Please make sure the time you make the call.

Kiki

Answer 3

PROBLEM:

I faced with this keyboard not showing up problem. I found the following solution inspired by this answer but not their solution! In short the reason for this mess is that the request focus and the IMM provided service can only run on a view that is created and active. When you do all these on the creation phase onCreate(Bundle savedInstance).. or onCreateView(LayoutInflater inflater... and the view is still in initializing state, you won't get an active view to act on! I have seen many solutions using delays and checks to wait for that view to get active then do the show keyboard but here is my solution based on the android frame work design:

SOLUTION:

in your activity or fragment override the following make sure your view has the access (define it in the top of the activity/fragment):

 @Override
public void onStart() {
    yourView.requestFocus();
    showSoftKeyboard(yourView);
    super.onStart();
}
 public void showSoftKeyboard(View view) {
    if(view.requestFocus()){
       InputMethodManager imm = (InputMethodManager)
            mContext.getSystemService(Context.INPUT_METHOD_SERVICE);
       imm.showSoftInput(view, InputMethodManager.SHOW_IMPLICIT);
    }
}

Consonant