Android soft keyboard letters not being detected

Question

I have an "edittext" in my app, and I want to do things when certain characters are pressed on the soft keyboard. I have tried every which way and how stackOverflow suggests, however characters i.e a/A, b/B etc dont get detected. Enter and Del do however. After reading loads, Apparently I have to override the edittext class, according to an example on here, so I have done that. I am overriding the method here:

    @Override
    public boolean sendKeyEvent(KeyEvent event) {
        if (event.getAction() == KeyEvent.ACTION_DOWN
                && event.getKeyCode() == KeyEvent.KEYCODE_A) {
            ZanyEditText.this.setRandomBackgroundColor();

            return false;
        }
        return super.sendKeyEvent(event);
    }

I also have tried overriding the standard edittext onKeyListener:

txtSMS.setOnKeyListener(new View.OnKeyListener() {
            @Override
            public boolean onKey(View v, int keyCode, KeyEvent event) {
                // You can identify which key pressed buy checking keyCode value
                // with KeyEvent.KEYCODE_
                if (keyCode == KeyEvent.KEYCODE_DEL) {
                    // this is for backspace
                    Toast.makeText(getApplicationContext(), "Del was pressed", Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();
                }
                if (keyCode == KeyEvent.KEYCODE_A) {
                    // this is for backspace
                    Toast.makeText(getApplicationContext(), "A was pressed", Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();
                }
                return false;
            }

However in both cases on the Del is ever detected. how come I cant detect characters of the alphabet? They appear in the text box...

Thanks

Answer 1

I was having a similar issure, you need to use a TextWatcher and then detect what was the last character to be entered (using 'subSequence'). The use logic to determine delete was pressed or an a was entered, hope this helps

See code below:

editText.addTextChangedListener(new TextWatcher() {

        @Override
        public void onTextChanged(CharSequence s, int start, int before,
                int count) {
            // TODO Auto-generated method stub
            //this is the method that detects the last entry below
            String c = s.subSequence(before, before + 1).toString();
            //check for delete
            if (before < s.length()) {
                String c = s.subSequence(before, before + 1).toString();
                //see if a was entererd
                if (c == a) {
                     //a entered

                }
            } else {
                //delete pressed

            }

        }

        @Override
        public void afterTextChanged(Editable s) {
            // TODO Auto-generated method stub

        }

        @Override
        public void beforeTextChanged(CharSequence s, int start, int count,
                int after) {
            // TODO Auto-generated method stub

        }

    });