How to restrict special characters from an Android EditText field?

Question

How to restrict special characters from an Android EditText field?

Answer 1

Have you tried adding the android:digits="abcde.....0123456789" attribute? Although the android:digits specify that it is a numeric field, it does work for me to set it to accept letters as well, and special characters as well (tested on SDK-7).

If this doesn't work then you'll have to implement KeyListener see: http://developer.android.com/reference/android/widget/TextView.html#setKeyListener(android.text.method.KeyListener)

Answer 2

Just pass the EditText object to this method. Also add the values that is to be blocked in the variable blockCharacterSet.

private void disableSpecialChar(EditText editText) {       final String blockCharacterSet = "<>";        InputFilter filter = new InputFilter() {         @Override        public CharSequence filter(CharSequence source, int start, int end,          Spanned dest, int dstart, int dend) {          if (source != null && blockCharacterSet.contains(("" + source))) {          return "";         }         return null;        }       };        editText.setFilters(new InputFilter[] { filter });       }