Android – Creating links using linkify

Linkify is a class that lets you create links from a TextView or a Spannable. You can create links not just to web pages, but also to locations on the map, emails and even phone numbers.

*Note: the examples bellow may not always work in the emulator.

Web address:

TextView myWebSite = new TextView(this);
myWebSite .setText("http://http://www.dzone.com/");
Linkify.addLinks(myWebSite , Linkify.WEB_URLS);

Phone number:

TextView myPhone = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.my_web_site);
myPhone .setText(“5552323233”);
Linkify.addLinks(myPhone  , Linkify.PHONE_NUMBERS);

Map address:

TextView myLocation = new TextView(this);
myLocation.setText("436 Mayfield Ave, Stanford, CA");
Linkify.addLinks(myLocation , Linkify.MAP_ADDRESSES); 
mainLayout.addView(myLocation);

Email address:

TextView myEmail= (TextView) findViewById(R.id.my_web_site);
myEmail.setText(“aviyehuda@gmail.com”);
Linkify.addLinks(myEmail  , Linkify.EMAIL_ADDRESSES);

Auto detect:
Use Linkify.ALL to automatically detect the link type.

Linkify.addLinks(myTextView , Linkify.ALL);

More than one option:
You can choose more than a single option for the link type.

Linkify.addLinks(myTextView, Linkify.PHONE_NUMBERS | Linkify.WEB_URLS);

Using pattern:
You can use a regular expression for detecting text parts and transform only them to links instead of the whole text.

 TextView myCustomLink = new TextView(this);
Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("[a-zA-Z]+&");
myCustomLink.setText("press Linkify& or on Android& to search it on google");
Linkify.addLinks(myCustomLink,pattern, "http://www.google.ie/search?q=");
mainLayout.addView(myCustomLink);

MatchFilter:
MatchFilter is used for more complicated filters.

MatchFilter myMatchFilter = new MatchFilter() {
	@Override
	public boolean acceptMatch(CharSequence cs, int start, int end) {
		return start > 48; 
	}
};

TextView myCustomLink2 = new TextView(this);
Pattern pattern2 = Pattern.compile("[a-zA-Z]+"); 
myCustomLink2.setText("press one of these words to search it on google: Android Linkify dzone");
Linkify.addLinks(myCustomLink2,pattern2, "http://www.google.ie/search?q=", myMatchFilter, null);
mainLayout.addView(myCustomLink2);

TransformFilter:
So fat the text we have filtered stayed the same. But sometimes you need the text to be different than the text which is appended to the link.

  TransformFilter myTransformFilter = new TransformFilter() {
	@Override
	public String transformUrl(Matcher match, String url) {
		return url.substring(1); //remove the $ sign
	}
};
		
TextView myCustomLink3 = new TextView(this);
Pattern pattern3 = Pattern.compile("\\$[a-zA-Z]+"); 
myCustomLink3.setText("press $Linkify or on $Android to search it on google");
Linkify.addLinks(myCustomLink3,pattern3, "http://www.google.ie/search?q=", null, myTransformFilter);
mainLayout.addView(myCustomLink3);

Download code example