EditText how to activate copy/paste popup without any actionbar?

Question

I m under delphi and i use the android framework to create an edit. When i set the theme to Theme.DeviceDefault.Light.NoActionBar then i can select some text in my EditText and i have a popup with "select all/cut/copy/paste/etc" like you can see on the picture below.

However, when i select Theme.Material.Light.NoActionBar or Theme.Holo.Light.NoActionBar then i can't select any text in my EditText (i have no right or left text selection handles) and off course i don't have any copy/paste popup

Is their any way to have this copy/paste popup on Theme_Material_Light_NoActionBar ?

Theme.DeviceDefault.Light.NoActionBar

Theme_Material_Light_NoActionBar

Theme.Holo.Light.NoActionBar

NOTE 1:

When i move the screen to the horizontal then the edittext take all the available space, and then i can see my right and left text selection handles like on the picture below, but i think it's because theme swap to Theme.DeviceDefault.Light.NoActionBar when i move the screen to the horizontal but i m not sure :

NOTE 2:

On my editText, when i do setCustomSelectionActionModeCallback(new Callback() {}) then the Callback is never called :( this is not normal i think ? What in the editText can forbid the callback ?

NOTE 2:

I can select text in all theme (but i can't copy it off course), but except in Theme.DeviceDefault.Light.NoActionBar i can't see the right and left text selection handle.

NOTE 3:

Theme.DeviceDefault.Light.NoActionBar show the right and left text selection handle only on some phones like the samsung galaxy. On some other it's didn't work.

NOTE 4:

i found partially the source of the problem! it's because i create my view via the WindowManager.addView(view, layout_params) and in this way startactionmodeforChild return null and this forbid the actionbar and the text selection handles to be show. Now if i do something like this in my edittext :

@Override
public ActionMode startActionMode(ActionMode.Callback callback) {
    Activity host = (Activity) this.getContext();    
    return host.getWindow().getDecorView().startActionMode(callback); 
} 

then i can see the right and left text action handles (but not on marshmallow, it's work only on lollipop this i don't know why). My problem now is that the actionbar is showed, but it's showed empty :( nothing is draw inside (but i can see that the cut/copy/past control are inside in the dump view hierarchie). So now i m not looking for a way to replace this actionbar by a popup menu instead (like on the picture Theme.DeviceDefault.Light.NoActionBar). Any idea ?

Answer 1

For API level 11 or above then you can stop copy,paste,cut and custom context menus from appearing by.

edittext.setCustomSelectionActionModeCallback(new ActionMode.Callback() {

        public boolean onPrepareActionMode(ActionMode mode, Menu menu) {
            return false;
        }

        public void onDestroyActionMode(ActionMode mode) {                  
        }

        public boolean onCreateActionMode(ActionMode mode, Menu menu) {
            return false;
        }

        public boolean onActionItemClicked(ActionMode mode, MenuItem item) {
            return false;
        }
    });

Returning false from onCreateActionMode(ActionMode, Menu) will prevent the action mode from being started(Select All, Cut, Copy and Paste actions).

Solution: Override isSuggestionsEnabled and canPaste in EditText.

For the quick solution, copy the class below - this class overrides the EditText class, and blocks all events accordingly.

For the gritty details, keep reading.

The solution lies in preventing PASTE/REPLACE menu from appearing in the show() method of the (non-documented) android.widget.Editor class. Before the menu appears, a check is done to if (!canPaste && !canSuggest) return;. The two methods that are used as the basis to set these variables are both in the EditText class:

isSuggestionsEnabled() is public, and may thus be overridden. canPaste() is not, and thus must be hidden by introducing a function of the same name in the derived class. So incorporating these updates into a class that also has the setCustomSelectionActionModeCallback, and the disabled long-click, here is the full class to prevent all editing (but still display the text selection handler) for controlling the cursor:

package com.cjbs.widgets;

import android.content.Context;
import android.util.AttributeSet;
import android.view.ActionMode;
import android.view.Menu;
import android.view.MenuItem;
import android.widget.EditText;


/**
 *  This is a thin veneer over EditText, with copy/paste/spell-check removed.
 */
public class NoMenuEditText extends EditText

{
    private final Context context;

    /** This is a replacement method for the base TextView class' method of the same name. This 
     * method is used in hidden class android.widget.Editor to determine whether the PASTE/REPLACE popup
     * appears when triggered from the text insertion handle. Returning false forces this window
     * to never appear.
     * @return false
     */
    boolean canPaste()
    {
       return false;
    }

    /** This is a replacement method for the base TextView class' method of the same name. This method
     * is used in hidden class android.widget.Editor to determine whether the PASTE/REPLACE popup
     * appears when triggered from the text insertion handle. Returning false forces this window
     * to never appear.
     * @return false
     */
    @Override
    public boolean isSuggestionsEnabled()
    {
        return false;
    }

    public NoMenuEditText(Context context)
    {
        super(context);
        this.context = context;
        init();
    }

    public NoMenuEditText(Context context, AttributeSet attrs)
    {
        super(context, attrs);
        this.context = context;
        init();
    }

    public NoMenuEditText(Context context, AttributeSet attrs, int defStyle)
    {
        super(context, attrs, defStyle);
        this.context = context;
        init();
    }

    private void init()
    {
        this.setCustomSelectionActionModeCallback(new ActionModeCallbackInterceptor());
        this.setLongClickable(false);
    }


    /**
     * Prevents the action bar (top horizontal bar with cut, copy, paste, etc.) from appearing
     * by intercepting the callback that would cause it to be created, and returning false.
     */
    private class ActionModeCallbackInterceptor implements ActionMode.Callback
    {
        private final String TAG = NoMenuEditText.class.getSimpleName();

        public boolean onCreateActionMode(ActionMode mode, Menu menu) { return false; }
        public boolean onPrepareActionMode(ActionMode mode, Menu menu) { return false; }
        public boolean onActionItemClicked(ActionMode mode, MenuItem item) { return false; }
        public void onDestroyActionMode(ActionMode mode) {}
    }
}