TextView BufferType

Question

From the android docs, there are 3 types of buffer for TextView, EDITABLE, NORMAL and SPANNABLE. What is the difference between each of them and what are some of their common use cases?

Answer 1

TextView.BufferType will be used for changing the TextView in runtime like insert, setting the different color in a single TextView, style etc.

EDITABLE -> only return Spannable and Editable.

NORMAL ->only return any CharSequence.

SPANNABLE -> only return Spannable.

Here is TextView.BufferType.EDITABLE uses.

yourTextView.setText("is a textView of Editable BufferType",TextView.BufferType.EDITABLE);
/* here i insert the textView value in a runtime*/
Editable editable = youTextView.getEditableText();
editable.insert(0,"This ");  //0 is the index value where the "TEXT" will be placed

Ouput:

This is a textView of Editable BufferType

Here is TextView.BufferType.SPANNABLE uses and This is also written by TextView.BufferType.EDITABLE (because editable written spannable or editable) by changing the arguments

yourTextView.setText("textView of Spannable BufferType",TextView.BufferType.SPANNABLE);
/* here i change the color in a textview*/
Spannable span = (Spannable)yourTextView.getText();
span.setSpan(new ForegroundColorSpan(0xff0000ff),11,"textView of Spannable BufferType".length(),Spanned.SPAN_INCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE);

Output:

textView of  `Spannable BufferType`(Spannable BufferType are in blue color)