handle textview link click in my android app

I'm currently rendering HTML input in a TextView like so:

tv.setText(Html.fromHtml("<a href='test'>test</a>"));

The HTML being displayed is provided to me via an external resource, so I cannot change things around as I will, but I can, of course, do some regex tampering with the HTML, to change the href value, say, to something else.

What I want is to be able to handle a link click directly from within the app, rather than having the link open a browser window. Is this achievable at all? I'm guessing it would be possible to set the protocol of the href-value to something like "myApp://", and then register something that would let my app handle that protocol. If this is indeed the best way, I'd like to know how that is done, but I'm hoping there's an easier way to just say, "when a link is clicked in this textview, I want to raise an event that receives the href value of the link as an input parameter"

Coming at this almost a year later, there's a different manner in which I solved my particular problem. Since I wanted the link to be handled by my own app, there is a solution that is a bit simpler.

Besides the default intent filter, I simply let my target activity listen to ACTION_VIEW intents, and specifically, those with the scheme com.package.name

<intent-filter>
    <category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT" />
    <action android:name="android.intent.action.VIEW" />
    <data android:scheme="com.package.name" />  
</intent-filter>

This means that links starting with com.package.name:// will be handled by my activity.

So all I have to do is construct a URL that contains the information I want to convey:

com.package.name://action-to-perform/id-that-might-be-needed/

In my target activity, I can retrieve this address:

Uri data = getIntent().getData();

In my example, I could simply check data for null values, because when ever it isn't null, I'll know it was invoked by means of such a link. From there, I extract the instructions I need from the url to be able to display the appropriate data.

Another way, borrows a bit from Linkify but allows you to customize your handling.

Custom Span Class:

public class ClickSpan extends ClickableSpan {

    private OnClickListener mListener;

    public ClickSpan(OnClickListener listener) {
        mListener = listener;
    }

    @Override
    public void onClick(View widget) {
       if (mListener != null) mListener.onClick();
    }

    public interface OnClickListener {
        void onClick();
    }
}

Helper function:

public static void clickify(TextView view, final String clickableText, 
    final ClickSpan.OnClickListener listener) {

    CharSequence text = view.getText();
    String string = text.toString();
    ClickSpan span = new ClickSpan(listener);

    int start = string.indexOf(clickableText);
    int end = start + clickableText.length();
    if (start == -1) return;

    if (text instanceof Spannable) {
        ((Spannable)text).setSpan(span, start, end, Spanned.SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE);
    } else {
        SpannableString s = SpannableString.valueOf(text);
        s.setSpan(span, start, end, Spanned.SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE);
        view.setText(s);
    }

    MovementMethod m = view.getMovementMethod();
    if ((m == null) || !(m instanceof LinkMovementMethod)) {
        view.setMovementMethod(LinkMovementMethod.getInstance());
    }
}

Usage:

 clickify(textView, clickText,new ClickSpan.OnClickListener()
     {
        @Override
        public void onClick() {
            // do something
        }
    });

if there are multiple links in the text view . For example textview has "https://" and "tel no" we can customise the LinkMovement method and handle clicks for words based on a pattern. Attached is the customised Link Movement Method.

public class CustomLinkMovementMethod extends LinkMovementMethod
{

private static Context movementContext;

private static CustomLinkMovementMethod	linkMovementMethod = new CustomLinkMovementMethod();

public boolean onTouchEvent(android.widget.TextView widget, android.text.Spannable buffer, android.view.MotionEvent event)
{
	int action = event.getAction();

	if (action == MotionEvent.ACTION_UP)
	{
		int x = (int) event.getX();
		int y = (int) event.getY();

		x -= widget.getTotalPaddingLeft();
		y -= widget.getTotalPaddingTop();

		x += widget.getScrollX();
		y += widget.getScrollY();

		Layout layout = widget.getLayout();
		int line = layout.getLineForVertical(y);
		int off = layout.getOffsetForHorizontal(line, x);

		URLSpan[] link = buffer.getSpans(off, off, URLSpan.class);
		if (link.length != 0)
		{
			String url = link[0].getURL();
			if (url.startsWith("https"))
			{
				Log.d("Link", url);
				Toast.makeText(movementContext, "Link was clicked", Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show();
			} else if (url.startsWith("tel"))
			{
				Log.d("Link", url);
				Toast.makeText(movementContext, "Tel was clicked", Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show();
			} else if (url.startsWith("mailto"))
			{
				Log.d("Link", url);
				Toast.makeText(movementContext, "Mail link was clicked", Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show();
			}
			return true;
		}
	}

	return super.onTouchEvent(widget, buffer, event);
}

public static android.text.method.MovementMethod getInstance(Context c)
{
	movementContext = c;
	return linkMovementMethod;
}

This should be called from the textview in the following manner:

textViewObject.setMovementMethod(CustomLinkMovementMethod.getInstance(context));

Here is a more generic solution based on @Arun answer

public abstract class TextViewLinkHandler extends LinkMovementMethod {

    public boolean onTouchEvent(TextView widget, Spannable buffer, MotionEvent event) {
        if (event.getAction() != MotionEvent.ACTION_UP)
            return super.onTouchEvent(widget, buffer, event);

        int x = (int) event.getX();
        int y = (int) event.getY();

        x -= widget.getTotalPaddingLeft();
        y -= widget.getTotalPaddingTop();

        x += widget.getScrollX();
        y += widget.getScrollY();

        Layout layout = widget.getLayout();
        int line = layout.getLineForVertical(y);
        int off = layout.getOffsetForHorizontal(line, x);

        URLSpan[] link = buffer.getSpans(off, off, URLSpan.class);
        if (link.length != 0) {
            onLinkClick(link[0].getURL());
        }
        return true;
    }

    abstract public void onLinkClick(String url);
}

To use it just implement onLinkClick of TextViewLinkHandler class. For instance:

    textView.setMovementMethod(new TextViewLinkHandler() {
        @Override
        public void onLinkClick(String url) {
            Toast.makeText(textView.getContext(), url, Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();
        }
    });

its very simple add this line to your code:

tv.setMovementMethod(LinkMovementMethod.getInstance());

Solution

I have implemented a small class with the help of which you can handle long clicks on TextView itself and Taps on the links in the TextView.

Layout

TextView android:id="@+id/text"
                android:layout_width="wrap_content"
                android:layout_height="wrap_content"
                android:autoLink="all"/>

TextViewClickMovement.java

import android.content.Context;
import android.text.Layout;
import android.text.Spannable;
import android.text.method.LinkMovementMethod;
import android.text.style.ClickableSpan;
import android.util.Patterns;
import android.view.GestureDetector;
import android.view.MotionEvent;
import android.widget.TextView;

public class TextViewClickMovement extends LinkMovementMethod {

    private final String TAG = TextViewClickMovement.class.getSimpleName();

    private final OnTextViewClickMovementListener mListener;
    private final GestureDetector                 mGestureDetector;
    private TextView                              mWidget;
    private Spannable                             mBuffer;

    public enum LinkType {

        /** Indicates that phone link was clicked */
        PHONE,

        /** Identifies that URL was clicked */
        WEB_URL,

        /** Identifies that Email Address was clicked */
        EMAIL_ADDRESS,

        /** Indicates that none of above mentioned were clicked */
        NONE
    }

    /**
     * Interface used to handle Long clicks on the {@link TextView} and taps
     * on the phone, web, mail links inside of {@link TextView}.
     */
    public interface OnTextViewClickMovementListener {

        /**
         * This method will be invoked when user press and hold
         * finger on the {@link TextView}
         *
         * @param linkText Text which contains link on which user presses.
         * @param linkType Type of the link can be one of {@link LinkType} enumeration
         */
        void onLinkClicked(final String linkText, final LinkType linkType);

        /**
         *
         * @param text Whole text of {@link TextView}
         */
        void onLongClick(final String text);
    }


    public TextViewClickMovement(final OnTextViewClickMovementListener listener, final Context context) {
        mListener        = listener;
        mGestureDetector = new GestureDetector(context, new SimpleOnGestureListener());
    }

    @Override
    public boolean onTouchEvent(final TextView widget, final Spannable buffer, final MotionEvent event) {

        mWidget = widget;
        mBuffer = buffer;
        mGestureDetector.onTouchEvent(event);

        return false;
    }

    /**
     * Detects various gestures and events.
     * Notify users when a particular motion event has occurred.
     */
    class SimpleOnGestureListener extends GestureDetector.SimpleOnGestureListener {
        @Override
        public boolean onDown(MotionEvent event) {
            // Notified when a tap occurs.
            return true;
        }

        @Override
        public void onLongPress(MotionEvent e) {
            // Notified when a long press occurs.
            final String text = mBuffer.toString();

            if (mListener != null) {
                Log.d(TAG, "----> Long Click Occurs on TextView with ID: " + mWidget.getId() + "\n" +
                                  "Text: " + text + "\n<----");

                mListener.onLongClick(text);
            }
        }

        @Override
        public boolean onSingleTapConfirmed(MotionEvent event) {
            // Notified when tap occurs.
            final String linkText = getLinkText(mWidget, mBuffer, event);

            LinkType linkType = LinkType.NONE;

            if (Patterns.PHONE.matcher(linkText).matches()) {
                linkType = LinkType.PHONE;
            }
            else if (Patterns.WEB_URL.matcher(linkText).matches()) {
                linkType = LinkType.WEB_URL;
            }
            else if (Patterns.EMAIL_ADDRESS.matcher(linkText).matches()) {
                linkType = LinkType.EMAIL_ADDRESS;
            }

            if (mListener != null) {
                Log.d(TAG, "----> Tap Occurs on TextView with ID: " + mWidget.getId() + "\n" +
                                  "Link Text: " + linkText + "\n" +
                                  "Link Type: " + linkType + "\n<----");

                mListener.onLinkClicked(linkText, linkType);
            }

            return false;
        }

        private String getLinkText(final TextView widget, final Spannable buffer, final MotionEvent event) {

            int x = (int) event.getX();
            int y = (int) event.getY();

            x -= widget.getTotalPaddingLeft();
            y -= widget.getTotalPaddingTop();

            x += widget.getScrollX();
            y += widget.getScrollY();

            Layout layout = widget.getLayout();
            int line = layout.getLineForVertical(y);
            int off = layout.getOffsetForHorizontal(line, x);

            ClickableSpan[] link = buffer.getSpans(off, off, ClickableSpan.class);

            if (link.length != 0) {
                return buffer.subSequence(buffer.getSpanStart(link[0]),
                        buffer.getSpanEnd(link[0])).toString();
            }

            return "";
        }
    }
}

Usage

TextView tv = (TextView) v.findViewById(R.id.textview);
tv.setText(Html.fromHtml("<a href='test'>test</a>"));
textView.setMovementMethod(new TextViewClickMovement(this, context));

Links

Hope this helps! You can find code here.

Just to share an alternative solution using a library I created. With Textoo, this can be achieved like:

TextView locNotFound = Textoo
    .config((TextView) findViewById(R.id.view_location_disabled))
    .addLinksHandler(new LinksHandler() {
        @Override
        public boolean onClick(View view, String url) {
            if ("internal://settings/location".equals(url)) {
                Intent locSettings = new Intent(android.provider.Settings.ACTION_LOCATION_SOURCE_SETTINGS);
                startActivity(locSettings);
                return true;
            } else {
                return false;
            }
        }
    })
    .apply();

Or with dynamic HTML source:

String htmlSource = "Links: <a href='http://www.google.com'>Google</a>";
Spanned linksLoggingText = Textoo
    .config(htmlSource)
    .parseHtml()
    .addLinksHandler(new LinksHandler() {
        @Override
        public boolean onClick(View view, String url) {
            Log.i("MyActivity", "Linking to google...");
            return false; // event not handled.  Continue default processing i.e. link to google
        }
    })
    .apply();
textView.setText(linksLoggingText);

for who looks for more options here is a one

// Set text within a `TextView`
TextView textView = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.textView);
textView.setText("Hey @sarah, where did @jim go? #lost");
// Style clickable spans based on pattern
new PatternEditableBuilder().
    addPattern(Pattern.compile("\\@(\\w+)"), Color.BLUE,
       new PatternEditableBuilder.SpannableClickedListener() {
        @Override
        public void onSpanClicked(String text) {
            Toast.makeText(MainActivity.this, "Clicked username: " + text,
                Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();
        }
}).into(textView);

RESOURCE : CodePath

public static void setTextViewFromHtmlWithLinkClickable(TextView textView, String text) {
    Spanned result;
    if (android.os.Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= android.os.Build.VERSION_CODES.N) {
        result = Html.fromHtml(text, Html.FROM_HTML_MODE_LEGACY);
    } else {
        result = Html.fromHtml(text);
    }
    textView.setText(result);
    textView.setMovementMethod(LinkMovementMethod.getInstance());
}

I changed the TextView's color to blue by using for example:

android:textColor="#3399FF"

in the xml file. How to make it underlined is explained here.

Then use its onClick property to specify a method (I'm guessing you could call setOnClickListener(this) as another way), e.g.:

myTextView.setOnClickListener(new OnClickListener() {
public void onClick(View v) {
	doSomething();
}
});

In that method, I can do whatever I want as normal, such as launch an intent. Note that you still have to do the normal myTextView.setMovementMethod(LinkMovementMethod.getInstance()); thing, like in your acitivity's onCreate() method.

This answer extends Jonathan S's excellent solution:

You can use the following method to extract links from the text:

private static ArrayList<String> getLinksFromText(String text) {
        ArrayList links = new ArrayList();

        String regex = "\(?\b((http|https)://www[.])[-A-Za-z0-9+&@#/%?=~_()|!:,.;]*[-A-Za-z0-9+&@#/%=~_()|]";
        Pattern p = Pattern.compile(regex);
        Matcher m = p.matcher(text);
        while (m.find()) {
            String urlStr = m.group();
            if (urlStr.startsWith("(") && urlStr.endsWith(")")) {
                urlStr = urlStr.substring(1, urlStr.length() - 1);
            }
            links.add(urlStr);
        }
        return links;
    }

This can be used to remove one of the parameters in the clickify() method:

public static void clickify(TextView view,
                                final ClickSpan.OnClickListener listener) {

        CharSequence text = view.getText();
        String string = text.toString();


        ArrayList<String> linksInText = getLinksFromText(string);
        if (linksInText.isEmpty()){
            return;
        }


        String clickableText = linksInText.get(0);
        ClickSpan span = new ClickSpan(listener,clickableText);

        int start = string.indexOf(clickableText);
        int end = start + clickableText.length();
        if (start == -1) return;

        if (text instanceof Spannable) {
            ((Spannable) text).setSpan(span, start, end, Spanned.SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE);
        } else {
            SpannableString s = SpannableString.valueOf(text);
            s.setSpan(span, start, end, Spanned.SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE);
            view.setText(s);
        }

        MovementMethod m = view.getMovementMethod();
        if ((m == null) || !(m instanceof LinkMovementMethod)) {
            view.setMovementMethod(LinkMovementMethod.getInstance());
        }
    }

A few changes to the ClickSpan:

public static class ClickSpan extends ClickableSpan {

        private String mClickableText;
        private OnClickListener mListener;

        public ClickSpan(OnClickListener listener, String clickableText) {
            mListener = listener;
            mClickableText = clickableText;
        }

        @Override
        public void onClick(View widget) {
            if (mListener != null) mListener.onClick(mClickableText);
        }

        public interface OnClickListener {
            void onClick(String clickableText);
        }
    }

Now you can simply set the text on the TextView and then add a listener to it:

TextViewUtils.clickify(textWithLink,new TextUtils.ClickSpan.OnClickListener(){

@Override
public void onClick(String clickableText){
  //action...
}

});

Example: Suppose you have set some text in textview and you want to provide a link on a particular text expression: "Click on #facebook will take you to facebook.com"

In layout xml:

<TextView
            android:id="@+id/testtext"
            android:layout_width="wrap_content"
            android:layout_height="wrap_content" />

In Activity:

String text  =  "Click on #facebook will take you to facebook.com";
tv.setText(text);
Pattern tagMatcher = Pattern.compile("[#]+[A-Za-z0-9-_]+\\b");
String newActivityURL = "content://ankit.testactivity/";
Linkify.addLinks(tv, tagMatcher, newActivityURL);

Also create one tag provider as:

public class TagProvider extends ContentProvider {

    @Override
    public int delete(Uri arg0, String arg1, String[] arg2) {
        // TODO Auto-generated method stub
        return 0;
    }

    @Override
    public String getType(Uri arg0) {
        return "vnd.android.cursor.item/vnd.cc.tag";
    }

    @Override
    public Uri insert(Uri arg0, ContentValues arg1) {
        // TODO Auto-generated method stub
        return null;
    }

    @Override
    public boolean onCreate() {
        // TODO Auto-generated method stub
        return false;
    }

    @Override
    public Cursor query(Uri arg0, String[] arg1, String arg2, String[] arg3,
                        String arg4) {
        // TODO Auto-generated method stub
        return null;
    }

    @Override
    public int update(Uri arg0, ContentValues arg1, String arg2, String[] arg3) {
        // TODO Auto-generated method stub
        return 0;
    }

}

In manifest file make as entry for provider and test activity as:

<provider
    android:name="ankit.TagProvider"
    android:authorities="ankit.testactivity" />

<activity android:name=".TestActivity"
    android:label = "@string/app_name">
    <intent-filter >
        <action android:name="android.intent.action.VIEW" />
        <category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT" />
        <data android:mimeType="vnd.android.cursor.item/vnd.cc.tag" />
    </intent-filter>
</activity>

Now when you click on #facebook, it will invoke testactivtiy. And in test activity you can get the data as:

Uri uri = getIntent().getData();

Kotlin version to @user5699130's answer:

Layout

<TextView
	android:layout_width="wrap_content"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:autoLink="all"/>

InterceptedLinkMovementMethod

import android.text.Spannable
import android.text.method.LinkMovementMethod
import android.text.style.ClickableSpan
import android.view.GestureDetector
import android.view.MotionEvent
import android.widget.TextView

/**
 * Usage:
 * fooTextView.movementMethod = InterceptedLinkMovementMethod(this)
 * Where 'this' implements [TextViewLinkClickListener]
 */
class InterceptedLinkMovementMethod(
    private val listener: TextViewLinkClickListener,
) : LinkMovementMethod() {

    private lateinit var textView: TextView
    private lateinit var spannable: Spannable
    private val gestureDetector: GestureDetector by lazy {
        GestureDetector(textView.context, SimpleTapListener())
    }

    override fun onTouchEvent(widget: TextView, buffer: Spannable, event: MotionEvent): Boolean {
        textView = widget
        spannable = buffer
        gestureDetector.onTouchEvent(event)
        return false
    }

    inner class SimpleTapListener : GestureDetector.SimpleOnGestureListener() {

        override fun onDown(event: MotionEvent): Boolean = true

        override fun onSingleTapConfirmed(event: MotionEvent): Boolean {
            val linkText = getLinkText(textView, spannable, event)
            val linkType = LinkTypes.getLinkTypeFromText(linkText)
            if (linkType != LinkTypes.NONE) {
                listener.onLinkClicked(linkText, linkType)
            }
            return false
        }

        override fun onLongPress(e: MotionEvent) {
            val linkText = getLinkText(textView, spannable, e)
            val linkType = LinkTypes.getLinkTypeFromText(linkText)
            if (linkType != LinkTypes.NONE) {
                listener.onLinkLongClicked(linkText, linkType)
            }
        }

        private fun getLinkText(widget: TextView, buffer: Spannable, event: MotionEvent): String {
            var x = event.x.toInt()
            var y = event.y.toInt()
            x -= widget.totalPaddingLeft
            y -= widget.totalPaddingTop
            x += widget.scrollX
            y += widget.scrollY
            val layout = widget.layout
            val line = layout.getLineForVertical(y)
            val off = layout.getOffsetForHorizontal(line, x.toFloat())
            val link = buffer.getSpans(off, off, ClickableSpan::class.java)
            if (link.isEmpty()) return ""
            return buffer.subSequence(buffer.getSpanStart(link[0]), buffer.getSpanEnd(link[0]))
                .toString()
        }
    }
}

LinkTypes

import android.util.Patterns

enum class LinkTypes {
    PHONE,
    WEB_URL,
    EMAIL_ADDRESS,
    NONE;

    companion object {
        fun getLinkTypeFromText(text: String): LinkTypes =
            when {
                Patterns.PHONE.matcher(text).matches() -> PHONE
                Patterns.WEB_URL.matcher(text).matches() -> WEB_URL
                Patterns.EMAIL_ADDRESS.matcher(text).matches() -> EMAIL_ADDRESS
                else -> NONE
            }
    }
}

TextViewLinkClickListener

interface TextViewLinkClickListener {
    fun onLinkClicked(linkText: String, linkTypes: LinkTypes)

    fun onLinkLongClicked(linkText: String, linkTypes: LinkTypes)
}