How to Display HTML in Android TextView

This example explains to display HTML in Android TextView. Many times while you design an application, you may encounter a place where you will like to use HTML content in your screen. This may be to display a static “eula” or “help” content. In android there is a lovely class android.text.HTML that processes HTML strings into displayable styled text. Currently android doesn’t support all HTML tags.

Android API documentation does not stipulate what HTML tags are supported. I have looked into the android Source code and from a quick look at the source code, here’s what seems to be supported as of now.

http://grepcode.com/file/repository.grepcode.com/java/ext/com.google.android/android/2.2_r1.1/android/text/Html.java

<a href="...">
<b>,  <big>, <blockquote>, <br>, <cite>, <dfn>
<div align="...">,  <em>, <font size="..." color="..." face="...">
<h1>,  <h2>, <h3>, <h4>,  <h5>, <h6>
<i>,  <img src="...">,  <p>, <small>
<strike>,  <strong>, <sub>, <sup>, <tt>, <u>

From HTML method returns displayable styled text from the provided HTML string. As per );"="" android’s official Documentations any  tags in the HTML will display as a generic replacement image which your program can then go through and replace with real images.

Html.formHtml method takes an Html.TagHandler and an Html.ImageGetter as arguments as well as the text to parse. We can parse null as for the Html.TagHandler but you’d need to implement your own Html.ImageGetter as there isn’t a default implementation. The Html.ImageGetterneeds to run synchronously and if you’re downloading images from the web you’ll probably want to do that asynchronously. But in my example I am using the images from resources to make my ImageGetter implementation simpler.

package com.javatechig.example.ui;

import android.os.Bundle;
import android.app.Activity;
import android.graphics.drawable.Drawable;
import android.text.Html;
import android.view.Menu;
import android.widget.TextView;
 /*
*  @author: nilanchala
*  http://javatechig.com/
*/
public class MainActivity extends Activity {

private final String htmlText = "  Heading TextThis tutorial " +
            "explains how to display " +
            "HTML text in android text view. " +
            "" +
            "  Example from " +
            "Javatechig.com";

@Override
protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
           super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
           setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);

          TextView htmlTextView = (TextView)findViewById(R.id.html_text);
          htmlTextView.setText(Html.fromHtml(htmlText, new ImageGetter(), null));

}

@Override
public boolean onCreateOptionsMenu(Menu menu) {
         // Inflate the menu; this adds items to the action bar if it is present.
         getMenuInflater().inflate(R.menu.main, menu);
         return true;
}

private class ImageGetter implements Html.ImageGetter {

public Drawable getDrawable(String source) {
        int id;
        if (source.equals("hughjackman.jpg")) {
               id = R.drawable.hughjackman;
        }
        else {
            return null;
        }

       Drawable d = getResources().getDrawable(id);
       d.setBounds(0,0,d.getIntrinsicWidth(),d.getIntrinsicHeight());
       return d;
     }
};

}