Custom Keyboard: handling inputType change

Question

I am running into an issue that I can't figure out. I wrote a simple custom IME keyboard based on this sample. It basically has two custom keyboards, one for letters and one for numbers. They use different layouts. However, when I add two `EditText` controls one for text and one for numbers, the keyboard does not refresh to the type it belongs. What I mean is that if I select the `EditText` with `inputType="text"` first, the QWERTY keyboard layout comes up. But then when I select the second `EditText` with `inputType="number"` the QWERTY keyboard shows up again. However it is supposed to load a different layout for numbers that is wired into the code. In other words, here's the test activity layout: Now if I select the "Text" field, the QWERTY keyboard comes up as below: However, if I select the "Number" filed, the QWERTY keyboard still shows up which is wrong. The expected behavior would be this keyboard to show up. Here's the code for the CustomIME and I tried to use `postInvalidate…

Accepted Answer

I think `onStartInputView()` is the callback you need to obtain:

Called when the input view is being shown and input has started on a new editor. This will always be called after onStartInput(EditorInfo, boolean), allowing you to do your general setup there and just view-specific setup here. You are guaranteed that onCreateInputView() will have been called some time before this function is called.

So, you get to know what exact input type to show in `onStartInput()`, but the actual place to perform switching to this new keyboard type should be `onStartInputView()`.

See how the sample `SoftKeyboard` application handles that functionality.

```
@Override public void onStartInput(EditorInfo attribute, boolean restarting) {
    super.onStartInput(attribute, restarting);

...

// We are now going to initialize our state based on the type of
    // text being edited.
    switch (attribute.inputType & InputType.TYPE_MASK_CLASS) {
        case InputType.TYPE_CLASS_NUMBER:
        case InputType.TYPE_CLASS_DATETIME:
            mCurKeyboard = mSymbolsKeyboard;
            break;

case InputType.TYPE_CLASS_PHONE:
            mCurKeyboard = mSymbolsKeyboard;
            break;

case InputType.TYPE_CLASS_TEXT:
            mCurKeyboard = mQwertyKeyboard;
            ...
            break;

default:
            // For all unknown input types, default to the alphabetic
            // keyboard with no special features.
            mCurKeyboard = mQwertyKeyboard;
    }

}

@Override public void onStartInputView(EditorInfo attribute, boolean restarting) {
    super.onStartInputView(attribute, restarting);
    // Apply the selected keyboard to the input view.
    setLatinKeyboard(mCurKeyboard);
    ...
}

private void setLatinKeyboard(LatinKeyboard nextKeyboard) {
    final boolean shouldSupportLanguageSwitchKey =
            mInputMethodManager.shouldOfferSwitchingToNextInputMethod(getToken());
    nextKeyboard.setLanguageSwitchKeyVisibility(shouldSupportLanguageSwitchKey);
    mInputView.setKeyboard(nextKeyboard);
}
```

Custom Keyboard: handling inputType change

Solution

Problem