edittext.settext() changes the keyboard type to default [ from ?123 to ABC]

Question

I have following code for my edittext formatting, since it can take any input I am not setting any input type:

if (cardNumberEditText != null) {
    cardNumberEditText.addTextChangedListener(new TextWatcher() {

        @Override
        public void onTextChanged(CharSequence s, int start, int before, int count) {
            int currSel = cardNumberEditText.getSelectionStart();
            cardNumberEditText.removeTextChangedListener(textWatcher);
            .
            .
            cardNumberEditText.setText(formattedNumber);
            .
            .
            cardNumberEditText.setSelection(currSel);
            cardNumberEditText.addTextChangedListener(textWatcher);
        }

        @Override
        public void beforeTextChanged(CharSequence s, int start, int count, int after) {
        }

        @Override
        public void afterTextChanged(Editable s) {

        }
    });
}

So initially I get the default input type which is ABC, now when I change it to ?123 (using ABC/123? toggel button) and after entering some number the keyboard changes back to ABC. This code seams to work fine on samsung devices s3 and sywpe but not on nexus with L and HTC one

When I comment all the code inside onTextChanged, it works fine. So when I investigated I found out that culprit is cardNumberEditText.setText(formattedNumber);

I am not setting any input type, I am just using the ABC/?123 toggle key on keyboard for switching

Any help/suggestion why this is happening (on few devices) and how can I correct it ??

Optical

Aren't you telling it to bring up the numeric keyboard by inputting a number? Or am I not understanding? – Panter

no i am not telling it by writing any code for input type, I am using the keyboad key ABC/123 to switch between them – Optical

finally found the answer here, will try it out – Optical

unfortunately the above one doesn't work well with me, any other better solution ??? – Optical

found one more solution, using append instead of settext, but still doesn't work with my case, as I am doing card formatting I need to settext at the end – Optical

Answer 1

finnaly got it working, had to combine multiple solutions mentioned in the comments above

since the guilty was settext, I found a replacement for it - append

but to use append I had to clear edittext without using settext, this link to the rescue

so replaced

cardNumberEditText.setText(formattedNumber);

with

cardNumberEditText.getText().clear();
cardNumberEditText.append(formattedNumber);

works like a charm now

Optical

append helped me in my scenerio.->edittext which has some a input enetered.settext will remove/clears the entire input.replacing with new settext value. use append if you dont want input to be removed. – Sandlin

Unfortunately this causes Galaxy S III 4.3 not to clear previous text properly and buggy device appends the text twice, but I get good results with s.replace(0, s.length(), formatted, 0, formatted.length()); in afterTextChanged(Editable s) . – Tiebold

Append method is fixing the keyboard switching behaivor. But there is a minor problem. My edittext is numeric because I want to prevent user entering anything but numbers. When I used settext I could set a text that contains space character. When I use append it doesn't allow me to append anything but numbers 8( – Cough

You saved my day – Stewardess

@EvrenOzturk this will be fixed by adding android:digits="0123456789 " to the xml, apparently whatever you append gets filtered with android:inputType but the filter will be "OR"ed with android:digits – Quintain

You saved our day! – Athiste

Answer 2

I had a similar problem, but keyboard was changed to default after I call scrollView.fullScroll(NestedScrollView.FOCUS_DOWN) when keyboard is shown I just replaced fullScroll method to smoothScrollTo and all work fine

Mita

Answer 3

In addition to the accepted answer, if anyone else struggles with cursor moving to the end after .append(), here is how you can retain cursor position:

val cursor = editText.selectionEnd
editText.text?.clear()
editText.append(input)
editText.setSelectionSafe(cursor)

where setSelectionSafe() is an extension I use to prevent crushes

fun EditText?.setSelectionSafe(index: Int) {
    if (this == null || index > this.length()) return
    this.setSelection(index)
}

this works both for entering and deleting !

Barta