How to disable editing in EditText on start, then enable it back when the user clicks on the EditText?

Question

My app contains an EditText object with some text in it. When the activity opens I don't want this EditText to be editable (view only, no blinking cursor & no keyboard pop up). Then in order to edit, the user clicks on the EditText (This brings back the blinking cursor and the keyboard pops up). There should have been a function like setEditable(boolean). The editable XML attribute in EditText is deprecated (The warning suggests using setInputType() instead).

Is there a way to achieve this?

Final note: I have searched the internet for couple hours and this is the best I ended up with:

@Override
protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
...

editor = (EditText) findViewById(R.id.noteEditText);
editor.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() {
    @Override
    public void onClick(View v) {
        editor.setInputType(
                EditorInfo.TYPE_TEXT_FLAG_CAP_SENTENCES | EditorInfo.TYPE_TEXT_FLAG_MULTI_LINE);
    }
});

editor.setInputType(EditorInfo.TYPE_NULL);

...
}

This doesn't work as I intend. I have to double click in order to be able to edit (On first click the blinking cursor and the keyboard don't appear, in second click they do)

You could just make sure the EditText doesn't get focus first when the activity resumes/starts and whenever the EditText is tapped it will get focus and function as normal. — cincy_anddeveloper, Nov 17 '17 at 16:24
Possible duplicate of [Stop EditText from gaining focus at Activity startup](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1555109/stop-edittext-from-gaining-focus-at-activity-startup) — Simo, Nov 17 '17 at 16:27

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 17 '17 at 16:27

Place this in your parent tag of the XML and you are done.

android:descendantFocusability="beforeDescendants"
android:focusableInTouchMode="true"

But the basic idea is to stop child views getting focus before anything else. So just give focus to the parent view group before the child.

<RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
  android:id="@+id/mainLayout"
  android:descendantFocusability="beforeDescendants"
  android:focusableInTouchMode="true" >

    <EditText
        android:id="@+id/noteEditText"
        android:layout_width="wrap_content"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:layout_centerHorizontal="true"
        android:ems="10"
        android:inputType="number"
        android:maxLength="30" >
    </EditText>

</RelativeLayout>

Thank you that did exactly what I wanted. – Abdallah Abdelazim Nov 17 '17 at 16:46 — Abdallah Abdelazim, Nov 17 '17 at 16:46

How to disable editing in EditText on start, then enable it back when the user clicks on the EditText?

1 Answers1