How to restrict TextView to allow only alpha-numeric characters in Android
In the XML, put this:
android:digits="abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz1234567890 "
Here is a better solution......... https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/android-developers/hS9Xj3zFwZA
InputFilter filter = new InputFilter() { public CharSequence filter(CharSequence source, int start, int end, Spanned dest, int dstart, int dend) { for (int i = start; i < end; i++) { if (!Character.isLetterOrDigit(source.charAt(i))) { return ""; } } return null; } }; edit.setFilters(new InputFilter[]{filter});
The InputFilter
solution works well, and gives you full control to filter out input at a finer grain level than android:digits
. The filter()
method should return null
if all characters are valid, or a CharSequence
of only the valid characters if some characters are invalid. If multiple characters are copied and pasted in, and some are invalid, only the valid characters should be kept (@AchJ's solution will reject the entire paste if any characters a invalid).
public static class AlphaNumericInputFilter implements InputFilter { public CharSequence filter(CharSequence source, int start, int end, Spanned dest, int dstart, int dend) { // Only keep characters that are alphanumeric StringBuilder builder = new StringBuilder(); for (int i = start; i < end; i++) { char c = source.charAt(i); if (Character.isLetterOrDigit(c)) { builder.append(c); } } // If all characters are valid, return null, otherwise only return the filtered characters boolean allCharactersValid = (builder.length() == end - start); return allCharactersValid ? null : builder.toString(); }}
Also, when setting your InputFilter
, you must make sure not to overwrite other InputFilters
set on your EditText
; these could be set in XML, like android:maxLength
. You must also consider the order that the InputFilters
are set. When used in conjunction with a length filter, your custom filter should be inserted before the length filter, that way pasted text applies the custom filter before the length filter (@AchJ's solution will overwrite all other InputFilters
and only apply the custom one).
// Apply the filters to control the input (alphanumeric) ArrayList<InputFilter> curInputFilters = new ArrayList<InputFilter>(Arrays.asList(editText.getFilters())); curInputFilters.add(0, new AlphaNumericInputFilter()); InputFilter[] newInputFilters = curInputFilters.toArray(new InputFilter[curInputFilters.size()]); editText.setFilters(newInputFilters);