How to know key presses in EditText

Question

I need to detect every key press on either a soft or hard keyboard in EditText. I just need to send the characters one at a time as they are pressed and don't need the final text string.

I have tried using an EditText with onKeyPress, but I ran into the problems here with not getting key presses with soft keyboards and TextWatcher isn't a good option because I need each key press. Is there any solution to know all the keypresses (including back, shift, enter... also)?

score 62 · Accepted Answer · edited Jan 19 '19 at 03:24

If you have an EditText, then you can use the TextWatcher interface. In my code, search_edit is an EditText.

search_edit.addTextChangedListener(new TextWatcher() {          
    @Override
    public void onTextChanged(CharSequence s, int start, int before, int count) {                                   
        //here is your code
        myadapter.getFilter().filter(s);
        listview.setAdapter(myadapter); 
    }                       
    @Override
    public void beforeTextChanged(CharSequence s, int start, int count, int after) {
        // TODO Auto-generated method stub                          
    }                       
    @Override
    public void afterTextChanged(Editable s) {
        // TODO Auto-generated method stub                  
    }
});

Won't it trigger if the text is changed programmatically? Is this really a key press event or just a text changed event? — Léon Pelletier, Mar 04 '14 at 15:53

score 9 · Answer 2 · edited Sep 07 '21 at 06:57

9

Implement this:

 et_code_1.setOnKeyListener(new View.OnKeyListener() {
            @Override
            public boolean onKey(View v, int keyCode, KeyEvent event) {
                if (keyCode == KeyEvent.KEYCODE_ENTER) {
                    /* do something */
                }
            return true;
            }
        });

Update:

As you would like to implement a Soft key listener, you can implement TextWatcher. Here is an example: How to use the TextWatcher class in Android?

edited Sep 07 '21 at 06:57

Shomu

2,229
19
32

answered Aug 19 '11 at 05:39

Paresh Mayani

125,853
70
238
294

7

Works only for hardware keys. – Pointer Null Oct 22 '12 at 09:34

score 3 · Answer 3 · answered Aug 19 '11 at 05:17

3

Use addTextChangedListener(TextWatcher watcher) and implement TextWatcher interfaace.

answered Aug 19 '11 at 05:17

Ronnie

24,023
8
54
95

10

TextWatcher events will be called for editText.setText(...); as well, which I guess is not a good option for the requestor. – Nar Gar Apr 17 '13 at 03:56
1

keypress not textchange – mehdi May 11 '19 at 07:37

How to know key presses in EditText

3 Answers3

Update:

Linked