Better way to get all the text in an EditText from an InputConnection?

Question

I've written an IME (InputMethodService) and I need to get all the text from the EditText it is editing. I know one way:

InputConnection inputConnection = getCurrentInputConnection();
inputConnection.append(inputConnection.getTextBeforeCursor(9999, 0))
.append(inputConnection.getTextAfterCursor(9999, 0));

It works, but it seems pretty stupid and clunky. However there is no such method InputConnection.getText().

Is there a better way?

P.S. I cannot access the EditText from my IME because it belongs to the parent app so please don't tell me to use EditText.getText(), unless you know a way to get the EditText!

Answer 1

My solution is to use getExtractedText(). I am not sure if this has some limitations, but has worked for me so far.

CharSequence currentText = inputConnection.getExtractedText(new ExtractedTextRequest(), 0).text;

Answer 2

Here is also another way to do it:

inputConnection.performContextMenuAction(android.R.id.selectAll);
CharSequence sData =  inputConnection.getSelectedText(0);