bufferapp / SocialLinkify

An Android library for linking @ mentions & Hashtags to their corresponding social network

SocialLinkify

An Android library for linking @ mentions & Hashtags to their corresponding social network

Motivation

For most of our projects we handle multiple social network types, which results in us needing to handle multiple link destinations for @ mentions and Hashtags. For example, if the @Buffer mention is used then this library will allow you to make that a clickable span pointing to either the Buffer Twitter profile, Facebook Page or Instagram profile. The same can be done for Hashtags. Rather than duplicate code across our projects we decided to create a small helper library to separate this from our projects.

How to use

There is only one function to call from SocialLinkify, that is socialLinkifyText(). This will return you an instance of a Spannable which you can then use to set your textview content to. This function takes four parameters:

• color - An Int representing the color you wish to use for linked elements

• text - The String that you wish to apply linking to

• socialNetwork - The SocialNetwork which you want the elements to be linked to. This can be either TWITTER, FACEBOOK or INSTAGRAM.

• patternTypes - A varargs parameter for the PatternType patterns that you want to be recognised, this can be any collection of HASHTAG, MENTION and URL.

For example, if I want to create linked spans for Twitter @ mentions, Hashtags & URLs:

text_message.text = SocialLinkify.socialLinkifyText(
        ContextCompat.getColor(context, R.color.some_color), message.text,
        SocialNetwork.TWITTER, PatternType.HASHTAG, PatternType.MENTION, PatternType.URL)

or if I want to create linked spans for Instagram @ mentions only:

text_message.text = SocialLinkify.socialLinkifyText(
        ContextCompat.getColor(context, R.color.some_color), message.text,
        SocialNetwork.INSTAGRAM, PatternType.MENTION)

or if I just want to create linked spans for Facebook hashtags:

text_message.text = SocialLinkify.socialLinkifyText(
        ContextCompat.getColor(context, R.color.some_color), message.text,
        SocialNetwork.FACEBOOK, PatternType.HASHTAG)

The SocialNetwork class also has a handy fromString() function to allow you to retrieve a SocialNetwork instance from some string that may be used in your app such as "twitter".