How to enable the default highlight menus in android webview?

Question

How to enable the default text highlights menu like: Copy/Paste/Search/Share in android webview ?

Denten

Answer 1

Working on Android 1.5 - 2.3 you can use emulateShiftHeld() made public since 2.2 but now is deprecated. this method put your WebView into text selection mode.

https://developer.android.com/reference/android/webkit/WebView.html#emulateShiftHeld%28%29

Unfortunately there's no copy/paste/search/share function integrated in Android, since Android 2.0 the text selection can be driven by touch but other than that, there's no other thing you can do.

Androsphinx

Any javascript related stuff you can suggest to do this? – Bumble

@Drax The question was mis-tagged. WebView is a Java class, and Java != JavaScript (and there is no "javascript"). However, you could try to emulate this in a document displayed by a WebView with DOM scripting using touch events. – Sensuality

Answer 2

I found a workaround for this Check out method selectText() on WebView (it's not in API, but can be invoked using reflection)

here is my full method source code:

 public void startTextSelection() {
        try {
            WebView.class.getMethod("selectText").invoke(this);
        } catch (Exception e) {
            try {
                WebView.class.getMethod("emulateShiftHeld").invoke(this);
            } catch (Exception e1) {
                KeyEvent shiftPressEvent = new KeyEvent(0, 0,
                        KeyEvent.ACTION_DOWN, KeyEvent.KEYCODE_SHIFT_LEFT, 0, 0);
                shiftPressEvent.dispatch(this);
                Toast.makeText(getContext(), R.string.select_text, Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show();
            }
        }
    }

Works on ICS too.

Precautionary

I used the above code but unfortunately selectText has been completely removed from Android 4.1 (Jellybean) so this will no longer work. Any suggestions for 4.1? – Wistrup

@Wistrup well i will have to look into the source code of 4.1 will get back to you as soon as i find the solution :) – Precautionary

After analyzing android.webkit.WebViewClassic I have had some success with: – Wistrup

After analyzing android.webkit.WebViewClassic I have had some success with the following: KeyEvent enterEvent = new KeyEvent(0,0,KeyEvent.ACTION_DOWN,KeyEvent.KEYCODE_ENTER,0,0); enterEvent.dispatch(this); but more may be required as I need to scroll down the WebView a little before the above works. – Wistrup

@Wistrup i think there will be some method which does this i haven't got time to look into source code but i will look into it as soon as possible ;) – Precautionary

Answer 3

Try this:

 mWebView.setHapticFeedbackEnabled(true);
 mWebView.setLongClickable(true);

Slosh