Book Excerpt: Floating Action Mode and ACTION_PROCESS_TEXT

The following is an excerpt from Version 6.8 of
���The Busy Coder���s Guide to Android Development���:



On Android 6.0, if you highlight text, you will see a new floating action mode,
where cut, copy, and paste operations reside:



Floating Action Mode



If you tap that overflow indicator on the action mode, a fly-out menu
will appear��� one that contains arbitrary apps, in addition to system-supplied
options:



Floating Action Mode, Showing Overflow with Custom Apps



In this case, the MNC ���API Demos��� app appears as an option. Choosing
it pops up an activity that has access to the highlighted text from the preceding activity:



API Demos Application, Showing Text Selection



Replacing the value in the field and clicking the button puts your replacement text in as a replacement for whatever you had highlighted.



The ���API Demos��� activity in question, that is receiving the text, supports ACTION_PROCESS_TEXT as the Intent action:



<intent-filter >
<action android:name="android.intent.action.PROCESS_TEXT"/>
<category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT" />
<data android:mimeType="text/plain" />
</intent-filter>


Note that this <intent-filter> also limits the MIME type to be
text/plain, though it is unclear if there are any other valid options
for that MIME type.



EXTRA_PROCESS_TEXT will hold some text, or EXTRA_PROCESS_TEXT_READONLY
will hold it if the text is read-only. The activity will be invoked via
startActivityForResult(). The result Intent can have its own
EXTRA_PROCESS_TEXT value, which will be the replacement text.

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Published on September 15, 2015 07:18
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