Android intercept paste\copy\cut on editText

android, android-edittext, textview, textwatcher

Solution

Seems there isn't much you can do by using the API: android paste event

Source reading to the rescue!

I dug into the Android Source of the `TextView` (`EditText` is a `TextView` with some different configuration) and found out that the menu used to offer the cut/copy/paste options is just a modified `ContextMenu` (source).

As for a normal context-menu, the View must create the menu (source) and then handle the interaction in a callback-method (source).

Because the handling method is `public`, we can simply hook into it by extending `EditText` and overwriting the method to react on the different actions. Here is an example-implementation:

import android.content.Context;
import android.util.AttributeSet;
import android.widget.EditText;
import android.widget.Toast;

/**
 * An EditText, which notifies when something was cut/copied/pasted inside it.
 * @author Lukas Knuth
 * @version 1.0
 */
public class MonitoringEditText extends EditText {

    private final Context context;

    /*
        Just the constructors to create a new EditText...
     */
    public MonitoringEditText(Context context) {
        super(context);
        this.context = context;
    }

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

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

    /**
     * <p>This is where the "magic" happens.</p>
     * <p>The menu used to cut/copy/paste is a normal ContextMenu, which allows us to
     *  overwrite the consuming method and react on the different events.</p>
     * @see <a href="http://grepcode.com/file/repository.grepcode.com/java/ext/com.google.android/android/2.3_r1/android/widget/TextView.java#TextView.onTextContextMenuItem%28int%29">Original Implementation</a>
     */
    @Override
    public boolean onTextContextMenuItem(int id) {
        // Do your thing:
        boolean consumed = super.onTextContextMenuItem(id);
        // React:
        switch (id){
            case android.R.id.cut:
                onTextCut();
                break;
            case android.R.id.paste:
                onTextPaste();
                break;
            case android.R.id.copy:
                onTextCopy();
        }
        return consumed;
    }

    /**
     * Text was cut from this EditText.
     */
    public void onTextCut(){
        Toast.makeText(context, "Cut!", Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();
    }

    /**
     * Text was copied from this EditText.
     */
    public void onTextCopy(){
        Toast.makeText(context, "Copy!", Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();
    }

    /**
     * Text was pasted into the EditText.
     */
    public void onTextPaste(){
        Toast.makeText(context, "Paste!", Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();
    }
}

Now, when the user uses cut/copy/paste, a `Toast` is shown (of course you could do other things, too).

The neat thing is that this works down to Android 1.5 and you don't need to re-create the context-menu (like suggested in the above linked question), which will keep the constant look of the platform (for example with HTC Sense).

Problem

Original source

Related problems

• Set text and get text from clipboard
• android paste event