Android dispatchKeyEvent not working for all KeyEvent codes

Question

I have an EditText and I try to call dispatchKeyEvent from my Activity to insert text into the EditText like so:

public class MainActivity extends AppCompatActivity implements View.OnFocusChangeListener {

    String TAG = "test";
    EditText editText;

    @Override
    protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        Log.d(TAG, "onCreate: ");
        setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);
        editText = (EditText) findViewById(R.id.edittext);
        editText.setOnFocusChangeListener(this);
    }

    @Override
    public void onFocusChange(View v, boolean hasFocus) {
        Log.d(TAG, "onFocusChange: "+hasFocus);
        if(hasFocus) {
            dispatchKeyEvent(new KeyEvent(KeyEvent.ACTION_DOWN, KeyEvent.KEYCODE_SHIFT_LEFT));
            dispatchKeyEvent(new KeyEvent(KeyEvent.ACTION_UP, KeyEvent.KEYCODE_SHIFT_LEFT));
            dispatchKeyEvent(new KeyEvent(KeyEvent.ACTION_DOWN, KeyEvent.KEYCODE_L));
            dispatchKeyEvent(new KeyEvent(KeyEvent.ACTION_DOWN, KeyEvent.KEYCODE_O));
            dispatchKeyEvent(new KeyEvent(KeyEvent.ACTION_DOWN, KeyEvent.KEYCODE_L));
        }
    }
}

Letters work fine but KeyEvents for shift and capslock do nothing. The above code writes "lol" to the EditText instead of "Lol" which would be expected. Why?

Answer 1

You can use another Constructor of KeyEvent() to use shift metadata like this:

dispatchKeyEvent(new KeyEvent(0,0,KeyEvent.ACTION_DOWN,KeyEvent.KEYCODE_L,0,KeyEvent.META_SHIFT_ON));

Source : https://developer.android.com/reference/android/view/KeyEvent.html