Often you might want to limit the number of characters a user can enter into your EditText control in Android. There are two ways to accomplish this:
- Using XML (e.g. layout or style)
- By code
1. Using XML:
Add android:maxLength property to the EditText definition in the XML file (or the style sheet). For example, to limit the text of EditText to 10 characters at most:
[sourcecode language="xml" light="true"]
<EditText android:id="@id+/txtFixedLength" android:maxLength="10" />
[/sourcecode]
2. By code:
Unfortunately, Android does not have a setMaxLength method to easily set the maximum length for a text input by code. To achieve this, we have to use InputFilters. The following example demonstrates achieving the same task as before (i.e. limiting the word length to at most 10 characters) in code:
[sourcecode language="java"]
// Load the EditText from layout
EditText txtFixedLength = (EditText) findViewById(R.id.txtFixedLengthInput);
// Create a new InputFilter to define the maximum length
InputFilter maxLengthFilter = new InputFilter.LengthFilter(10);
// Apply the filter to the EditText. The array can contain other filters.
txtFixedLength.setFilters(new InputFilter[]{ maxLengthFilter });
[/sourcecode]