android view url in xml layout

Question

I have a layout that I have set up with the android xml layout. I would like to embed a link in a text view so that if you click on the link, it opens in the android browser. how is that done. There does not seem to be a url view or anything.

Answer 1

You should be able to just include the URL in the TextView and then Linkify it. There is also a Tutorial about Linkify and custom links that might help.

Answer 2

Here's how to do this in a non-obvious but commonly desired way. Let's say we want to linkify just the word blammo inside a textview. When the user presses on blammo, a browser opens and sends them to google.com.

Try something like this:

class sampleTransformFilter implements TransformFilter {
    public String transformUrl(Matcher match, String url) {
        return "http://google.com";
    }
}

class sampleMatchFilter implements MatchFilter {
    public boolean acceptMatch(CharSequence s, int start, int end) {
        return true;
    }
}       

Pattern sampleMatcher = Pattern.compile("blammo");      
String sampleURL =    "";
Linkify.addLinks(textView, sampleMatcher, sampleURL, new sampleMatchFilter(), new sampleTransformFilter());