[android] how to make a specific text on TextView BOLD

I don't know how to make a specific text on TextView become BOLD.

its like this

txtResult.setText(id+" "+name);

I want the output to be like this:

1111 neil

id and name are variables that I have retrieved the value from database, and I want to make the id to bold, but only the id so the name will not affected, I have no idea how to do this.

Its simple just close the specified text like this for example <b>"your text here:"</b>

<string name="headquarters">"<b>"Headquarters:"</b>" Mooresville, North Carolina, U.S.</string>

result: Headquarters: Mooresville, North Carolina, U.S.

As wtsang02 said, using HTML is an expensive overhead. Just use the native solution. If you don't have to modify the string, just use SpannableString, not SpannableStringBuilder.

String boldText = "id";
String normalText = "name";
SpannableString str = new SpannableString(boldText + normalText);
str.setSpan(new StyleSpan(Typeface.BOLD), 0, boldText.length(), Spannable.SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE);
textView.setText(str);

In case someone is using Data Binding. We can define binding adapter like this

@BindingAdapter("html")
fun setHtml(view: TextView, html: String) {
    view.setText(HtmlCompat.fromHtml(html, HtmlCompat.FROM_HTML_MODE_LEGACY))
}

Then we can use it on a TextView

app:html="@{@string/bold_text}"

where bold_text is

<string name="bold_text"><![CDATA[Part of text is <b>bold</b>]]></string>

Simple Example

In you strings.xml

<string name="str_privacy_policy">This is our Privacy Policy.</string>

if you want to make specifically "Privacy Policy" as bold put the string between the bold tags.

Like this

<string name="str_privacy_policy">This is our <b>Privacy Policy.</b></string>

Result would be

This is our Privacy Policy

I have created a static method for setting part of text Bold for TextView and EditText

public static void boldPartOfText(View mView, String contentData, int startIndex, int endIndex){
        if(!contentData.isEmpty() && contentData.length() > endIndex) {
            final SpannableStringBuilder sb = new SpannableStringBuilder(contentData);

            final StyleSpan bss = new StyleSpan(Typeface.BOLD); // Span to make text bold
            final StyleSpan iss = new StyleSpan(Typeface.NORMAL); //Span to make text normal
            sb.setSpan(iss, 0, startIndex, Spanned.SPAN_INCLUSIVE_INCLUSIVE);
            sb.setSpan(bss, startIndex, endIndex, Spannable.SPAN_INCLUSIVE_INCLUSIVE); // make first 4 characters Bold
            sb.setSpan(iss,endIndex, contentData.length()-1, Spanned.SPAN_INCLUSIVE_INCLUSIVE);

            if(mView instanceof TextView)
               ((TextView) mView).setText(sb);
            else if(mView instanceof EditText)
               ((EditText) mView).setText(sb);

        }
    }

Another more customized code

  /*typeFaceStyle can be passed as 

    Typeface.NORMAL = 0;
    Typeface.BOLD = 1;
    Typeface.ITALIC = 2;
    Typeface.BOLD_ITALIC = 3;*/

    public static void boldPartOfText(View mView, String contentData, int startIndex, int endIndex,int typeFaceStyle){
        if(!contentData.isEmpty() && contentData.length() > endIndex) {
            final SpannableStringBuilder sb = new SpannableStringBuilder(contentData);

            final StyleSpan bss = new StyleSpan(typeFaceStyle); // Span to make text bold
            final StyleSpan iss = new StyleSpan(Typeface.NORMAL); //Span to make text italic
            sb.setSpan(iss, 0, startIndex, Spanned.SPAN_INCLUSIVE_INCLUSIVE);
            sb.setSpan(bss, startIndex, endIndex, Spannable.SPAN_INCLUSIVE_INCLUSIVE); // make first 4 characters Bold
            sb.setSpan(iss,endIndex,contentData.length()-1,Spanned.SPAN_INCLUSIVE_INCLUSIVE);

            if(mView instanceof TextView)
                ((TextView) mView).setText(sb);
            else if(mView instanceof EditText)
                ((EditText) mView).setText(sb);
        }
    }

In case you want to use the string from XML, you can do something like this:

strings.xml (the "CDATA" part is important, otherwise it won't work)

<string name="test">
     <![CDATA[
 <b>bold!</b> normal
    ]]>
</string>

layout file

<FrameLayout
    xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools"
    android:layout_width="match_parent" android:layout_height="match_parent" tools:context=".MainActivity">

    <TextView
        android:id="@+id/textView" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:layout_gravity="center" />

</FrameLayout>

code

textView.text = HtmlCompat.fromHtml(getString(R.string.test), HtmlCompat.FROM_HTML_MODE_LEGACY)

Your String resource

<resources>
   <string name="your_string_resource_name">This is normal text<![CDATA[<b> but this is bold </b>]]> and <![CDATA[<u> but this is underline text</u>]]></string>
</resources> 

your java class

yourtextView.setText(getString(R.string.your_string_resource_name));

I used this code to bold specific words...

    Spanned string = Html.fromHtml("Normal string <b>BOLD STRING</b>");
    textView.setText(string);

if the position of bold text is fixed(ex: if is at start of the textView), then use two different textView with same background. Then you can make the other textView's textStyle as bold.

This will require twice the memory compared to a single textView but speed will increase.

wtsang02 answer is the best way to go about it, since, Html.fromHtml("") is now deprecated. Here I'm just going to enhance it a little bit for whoever is having problem in dynamically making the first word bold, no matter whats the size of the sentence.

First lets create a method to get the first word:

 private String getFirstWord(String input){

    for(int i = 0; i < input.length(); i++){

        if(input.charAt(i) == ' '){

            return input.substring(0, i);
        }
    }

    return input;
}

Now let's say you have a long string like this:

String sentence = "[email protected] want's to be your friend!"

And you want your sentence to be like [email protected] want's to be your friend! All you have to do is- get the firstWord and get the lenght of it to make the firstWord bold, something like this:

String myFirstWord = getFirstWord(sentence);
int start = 0; // bold will start at index 0
int end = myFirstWord.length(); // and will finish at whatever the length of your first word

Now just follow wtsang02 's steps, like this:

SpannableStringBuilder fancySentence = new SpannableStringBuilder(sentence);
fancySentence.setSpan(new android.text.style.StyleSpan(Typeface.BOLD), start, end, Spannable.SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE);
textView.setText(fancySentence);

And that's it! Now you should be able to bold a word with any size from long/short sentence. Hope it will help someone, happy coding :)

Make first char of string spannable while searching for char in list/recycler like

ravi and ajay

previously highlighting like this but i wanted to be like below

ravi and ajay OR ravi and ajay

for this I searched for word length if it is equal to 1 ,I separated main string into words and calculated word start position then I searched word starting with char.

 public static SpannableString colorString(int color, String text, String... wordsToColor) {
    SpannableString coloredString = new SpannableString(text);

    for (String word : wordsToColor) {

        Log.e("tokentoken", "-wrd len-" + word.length());
        if (word.length() !=1) {
            int startColorIndex = text.toLowerCase().indexOf(word.toLowerCase());
            int endColorIndex = startColorIndex + word.length();
            try {
                coloredString.setSpan(new ForegroundColorSpan(color), startColorIndex, endColorIndex,
                        Spannable.SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE);

            } catch (Exception e) {
                e.getMessage();
            }
        } else {
            int start = 0;

            for (String token : text.split("[\u00A0 \n]")) {
                if (token.length() > 0) {
                    start = text.indexOf(token, start);
                   // Log.e("tokentoken", "-token-" + token + "   --start--" + start);
                    char x = token.toLowerCase().charAt(0);
                    char w = word.toLowerCase().charAt(0);
                   // Log.e("tokentoken", "-w-" + w + "   --x--" + x);

                    if (x == w) {
                        // int startColorIndex = text.toLowerCase().indexOf(word.toLowerCase());
                        int endColorIndex = start + word.length();
                        try {
                            coloredString.setSpan(new ForegroundColorSpan(color), start, endColorIndex,
                                    Spannable.SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE);

                        } catch (Exception e) {
                            e.getMessage();
                        }
                    }
                }
            }

        }

    }

    return coloredString;
}

You can add the two strings separately in the builder, one of them is spannedString, the other is a regular one.This way you don`t have to calculate the indexes.

val instructionPress = resources?.getString(R.string.settings_press)

val okText = resources?.getString(R.string.ok)
val spannableString = SpannableString(okText)

val spannableBuilder = SpannableStringBuilder()
spannableBuilder.append(instructionPress)
spannableBuilder.append(spannableString, StyleSpan(Typeface.BOLD), Spannable.SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE)

instructionText.setText(spannableBuilder,TextView.BufferType.SPANNABLE)

While you can use Html.fromHtml() you can use a more native approach which is SpannableStringBuilder , this post may be helful.

SpannableStringBuilder str = new SpannableStringBuilder("Your awesome text");
str.setSpan(new android.text.style.StyleSpan(android.graphics.Typeface.BOLD), INT_START, INT_END, Spannable.SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE);
TextView tv=new TextView(context);
tv.setText(str);

Based on @mladj0ni's answer, I got the code below to work. The problem was that if you use String.format, it strips out the html markup, so you have to escape the bracket symbols in strings.xml:

strings.xml:

<string name="welcome_messages">Hello, %1$s! You have &lt;b>%2$d new messages&lt;/b>.</string>

code.java:

String unspanned = String.format(Locale.US, "%s%s", getResources().getString(R.string. welcome_messages), 99);

Spanned spanned;
if (android.os.Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= android.os.Build.VERSION_CODES.N) {
    spanned = Html.fromHtml(unspanned, Html.FROM_HTML_MODE_LEGACY);
} else {
    spanned = Html.fromHtml(unspanned);
}

textView.setText(spanned);

It's simpler than SpannableStringBuilder. As for performance, if you're displaying just one string, then the user won't notice the extra millisecond to parse it.

See the documentation here.

If you are using Kotlin, it becomes even easier to do by using core-ktx, as it provides a domain-specific-language (DSL) for doing this:

val string: SpannedString = buildSpannedString {
    bold {
        append("foo")
    }
    append("bar")     
}

More options provided by it are:

append("Hello There")
bold {
    append("bold")
    italic {
        append("bold and italic")
        underline {
            append("then some text with underline")
        }
    }
}

At last, you can just to:

textView.text = string

Here is my complete solution for dynamic String values with case check.

/**
 * Makes a portion of String formatted in BOLD.
 *
 * @param completeString       String from which a portion needs to be extracted and formatted.<br> eg. I am BOLD.
 * @param targetStringToFormat Target String value to format. <br>eg. BOLD
 * @param matchCase Match by target character case or not. If true, BOLD != bold
 * @return A string with a portion formatted in BOLD. <br> I am <b>BOLD</b>.
 */
public static SpannableStringBuilder formatAStringPortionInBold(String completeString, String targetStringToFormat, boolean matchCase) {
    //Null complete string return empty
    if (TextUtils.isEmpty(completeString)) {
        return new SpannableStringBuilder("");
    }

    SpannableStringBuilder str = new SpannableStringBuilder(completeString);
    int start_index = 0;

    //if matchCase is true, match exact string
    if (matchCase) {
        if (TextUtils.isEmpty(targetStringToFormat) || !completeString.contains(targetStringToFormat)) {
            return str;
        }

        start_index = str.toString().indexOf(targetStringToFormat);
    } else {
        //else find in lower cases
        if (TextUtils.isEmpty(targetStringToFormat) || !completeString.toLowerCase().contains(targetStringToFormat.toLowerCase())) {
            return str;
        }

        start_index = str.toString().toLowerCase().indexOf(targetStringToFormat.toLowerCase());
    }

    int end_index = start_index + targetStringToFormat.length();
    str.setSpan(new StyleSpan(BOLD), start_index, end_index, Spannable.SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE);
    return str;
}

Eg. completeString = "I am BOLD"

CASE I if *targetStringToFormat* = "bold" and *matchCase* = true

returns "I am BOLD" (since bold != BOLD)

CASE II if *targetStringToFormat* = "bold" and *matchCase* = false

returns "I am BOLD"

To Apply:

myTextView.setText(formatAStringPortionInBold("I am BOLD", "bold", false))

Hope that helps!

I thought that the chosen answer didn't provide a satisfactory result. I have written my own function which takes 2 strings; The full text and the part of the text you want to make bold.

It returns a SpannableStringBuilder with the 'textToBold' from 'text' bolded.

I find the ability to make a substring bold without wrapping it in tags useful.

    /**
     * Makes a substring of a string bold.
     * @param text          Full text
     * @param textToBold    Text you want to make bold
     * @return              String with bold substring
     */

    public static SpannableStringBuilder makeSectionOfTextBold(String text, String textToBold){

        SpannableStringBuilder builder=new SpannableStringBuilder();

        if(textToBold.length() > 0 && !textToBold.trim().equals("")){

            //for counting start/end indexes
            String testText = text.toLowerCase(Locale.US);
            String testTextToBold = textToBold.toLowerCase(Locale.US);
            int startingIndex = testText.indexOf(testTextToBold);
            int endingIndex = startingIndex + testTextToBold.length();
            //for counting start/end indexes

            if(startingIndex < 0 || endingIndex <0){
                return builder.append(text);
            }
            else if(startingIndex >= 0 && endingIndex >=0){

                builder.append(text);
                builder.setSpan(new StyleSpan(Typeface.BOLD), startingIndex, endingIndex, 0);
            }
        }else{
            return builder.append(text);
        }

        return builder;
  }

You can use this code to set part of your text to bold. For whatever is in between the bold html tags, it will make it bold.

String myText = "make this <b>bold</b> and <b>this</b> too";
textView.setText(makeSpannable(myText, "<b>(.+?)</b>", "<b>", "</b>"));

public SpannableStringBuilder makeSpannable(String text, String regex, String startTag, String endTag) {

            StringBuffer sb = new StringBuffer();
            SpannableStringBuilder spannable = new SpannableStringBuilder();

            Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile(regex);
            Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(text);
            while (matcher.find()) {
                sb.setLength(0);
                String group = matcher.group();
                String spanText = group.substring(startTag.length(), group.length() - endTag.length());
                matcher.appendReplacement(sb, spanText);

                spannable.append(sb.toString());
                int start = spannable.length() - spanText.length();

                spannable.setSpan(new android.text.style.StyleSpan(android.graphics.Typeface.BOLD), start, spannable.length(), Spannable.SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE);
            }
            sb.setLength(0);
            matcher.appendTail(sb);
            spannable.append(sb.toString());
            return spannable;
        }

Here is better solution if you want to make multiple text to bold. I've improved Eitan's code. thanks Eitan.

public static SpannableStringBuilder makeSectionOfTextBold(String text, String... textToBold) {
    SpannableStringBuilder builder = new SpannableStringBuilder(text);

    for (String textItem :
            textToBold) {
        if (textItem.length() > 0 && !textItem.trim().equals("")) {
            //for counting start/end indexes
            String testText = text.toLowerCase(Locale.US);
            String testTextToBold = textItem.toLowerCase(Locale.US);
            int startingIndex = testText.indexOf(testTextToBold);
            int endingIndex = startingIndex + testTextToBold.length();

            if (startingIndex >= 0 && endingIndex >= 0) {
                builder.setSpan(new StyleSpan(Typeface.BOLD), startingIndex, endingIndex, 0);
            }
        }
    }

    return builder;
}

This is the Kotlin extension function I use for this

/**
 * Sets the specified Typeface Style on the first instance of the specified substring(s)
 * @param one or more [Pair] of [String] and [Typeface] style (e.g. BOLD, ITALIC, etc.)
 */
fun TextView.setSubstringTypeface(vararg textsToStyle: Pair<String, Int>) {
    val spannableString = SpannableString(this.text)
    for (textToStyle in textsToStyle) {
        val startIndex = this.text.toString().indexOf(textToStyle.first)
        val endIndex = startIndex + textToStyle.first.length

        if (startIndex >= 0) {
            spannableString.setSpan(
                StyleSpan(textToStyle.second),
                startIndex,
                endIndex,
                Spannable.SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE
            )
        }
    }
    this.setText(spannableString, TextView.BufferType.SPANNABLE)
}

Usage:

text_view.text="something bold"
text_view.setSubstringTypeface(
    Pair(
        "something bold",
        Typeface.BOLD
    )
)

.

text_view.text="something bold something italic"
text_view.setSubstringTypeface(
    Pair(
        "something bold ",
        Typeface.BOLD
    ),
    Pair(
        "something italic",
        Typeface.ITALIC
    )
)

I came here to provide a more up-to-date solution, because I wasn't satisfied with the existing answers. I needed something that would work for translated texts and does not have the performance hit of using Html.fromHtml(). If you're using Kotlin, here is an extension function which will easily set multiple parts of your text to bold. This works just like Markdown, and could be extended to support other Markdown tags, if need be.

val yourString = "**This** is your **string**.".makePartialTextsBold()
val anotherString = getString(R.string.something).makePartialTextsBold()

/**
 * This function requires that the parts of the string that need
 * to be bolded are wrapped in ** and ** tags
 */
fun String.makePartialTextsBold(): SpannableStringBuilder {
    var copy = this
    return SpannableStringBuilder().apply {
        var setSpan = true
        var next: String
        do {
            setSpan = !setSpan
            next = if (length == 0) copy.substringBefore("**", "") else copy.substringBefore("**")
            val start = length
            append(next)
            if (setSpan) {
                setSpan(StyleSpan(Typeface.BOLD), start, length,
                        Spannable.SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE)
            }
            copy = copy.removePrefix(next).removePrefix("**")
        } while (copy.isNotEmpty())
    }
}

public static Spanned getBoldString(String textNotBoldFirst, String textToBold, String textNotBoldLast) {
    String resultant = null;

    resultant = textNotBoldFirst + " " + "<b>" + textToBold + "</b>" + " " + textNotBoldLast;

    return Html.fromHtml(resultant);

}

Try this. It can help definitely

Found a way in case you want to handle localization in multiple languages, it's boring to do but it works, let's suppose we want this:

In English:

There are no payments registered

In Spanish:

No hay pagos registrados

You have to create 3 strings

English:

<string name="start_string">There are no</string>
<string name="middle_string">payments</string>
<string name="end_string">registered.</string>
<string name="string_format" translatable="false">%1$s %2$s %3$s</string>

Spanish:

<string name="start_string">No hay</string>
<string name="middle_string">pagos</string>
<string name="end_string">registrados</string>

Now you can do this:

val startSpanPosition = getString(R.string.start_string).length
val endSpanPosition = startSpanPosition + getString(R.string.middle_string).length
val mySpannableString = SpannableStringBuilder(String.format(getString(R.string.string_format),
        getString(R.string.start_string), getString(R.string.middle_string))), getString(R.string.end_string)))

mySpannableString.setSpan(StyleSpan(Typeface.BOLD), spanStartPosition, endSpanPosition, Spannable.SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE)

First: You don't need to worry about using the slow performance code from the Raghav Sood's answer.

Second: You don't need to write an extension function provided by w3bshark's answer when using Kotlin.

Finnaly: All you need to do is to use the Kotlin android-ktx library from Google (refer here to find more information and how to include it on your project):

// Suppose id = 1111 and name = neil (just what you want). 
val s = SpannableStringBuilder()
          .bold { append(id) } 
          .append(name)
txtResult.setText(s) 

Produces: 1111 neil

UPDATE:

Because I think it can help someone else as well as to demonstrate how far you can go here are more use cases.

• When you need to display a text with some parts in blue and italic:

  val myCustomizedString = SpannableStringBuilder()
      .color(blueColor, { append("A blue text ") })
      .append("showing that ")
      .italic{ append("it is painless") }
  

• When you need to display a text in both bold and italic:

      bold { italic { append("Bold and italic") } }
  

In short, bold, append, color and italic are extension functions to SpannableStringBuilder. You can see another extension functions in the official documentation, from where you can think for other possibilities.