Html.fromHtml deprecated in Android N

by

The question:

I am using Html.fromHtml to view html in a TextView.

Spanned result = Html.fromHtml(mNews.getTitle());
...
...
mNewsTitle.setText(result);

But Html.fromHtml is now deprecated in Android N+

What/How do I find the new way of doing this?

The Solutions:

Below are the methods you can try. The first solution is probably the best. Try others if the first one doesn’t work. Senior developers aren’t just copying/pasting – they read the methods carefully & apply them wisely to each case.

Method 1

update:
as @Andy mentioned below Google has created HtmlCompat which can be used instead of the method below. Add this dependency implementation 'androidx.core:core:1.0.1
to the build.gradle file of your app. Make sure you use the latest version of androidx.core:core.

This allows you to use: 

HtmlCompat.fromHtml(html, HtmlCompat.FROM_HTML_MODE_LEGACY);

You can read more about the different flags on the HtmlCompat-documentation

original answer:
In Android N they introduced a new Html.fromHtml method. Html.fromHtml now requires an additional parameter, named flags. This flag gives you more control about how your HTML gets displayed.

On Android N and above you should use this new method. The older method is deprecated and may be removed in the future Android versions.

You can create your own Util-method which will use the old method on older versions and the newer method on Android N and above. If you don’t add a version check your app will break on lower Android versions. You can use this method in your Util class. 

@SuppressWarnings("deprecation")
public static Spanned fromHtml(String html){
    if(html == null){
        // return an empty spannable if the html is null
        return new SpannableString("");
    }else if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= Build.VERSION_CODES.N) {
        // FROM_HTML_MODE_LEGACY is the behaviour that was used for versions below android N
        // we are using this flag to give a consistent behaviour
        return Html.fromHtml(html, Html.FROM_HTML_MODE_LEGACY);
    } else {
        return Html.fromHtml(html);
    }
}

You can convert the HTML.FROM_HTML_MODE_LEGACY into an additional parameter if you want. This gives you more control about it which flag to use.

You can read more about the different flags on the
Html class documentation

Method 2

I had a lot of these warnings and I always use FROM_HTML_MODE_LEGACY so I made a helper class called HtmlCompat containing the following:

   @SuppressWarnings("deprecation")
   public static Spanned fromHtml(String source) {
        if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= Build.VERSION_CODES.N) {
            return Html.fromHtml(source, Html.FROM_HTML_MODE_LEGACY);
        } else {
            return Html.fromHtml(source);
        }
    }

Method 3

Compare of the flags of fromHtml().

<p style="color: blue;">This is a paragraph with a style</p>

<h4>Heading H4</h4>

<ul>
   <li style="color: yellow;">
      <font color='#FF8000'>li orange element</font>
   </li>
   <li>li #2 element</li>
</ul>

<blockquote>This is a blockquote</blockquote>

Text after blockquote
Text before div

<div>This is a div</div>

Text after div

FROM_HTML FLAGS

Method 4

Or you can use androidx.core.text.HtmlCompat:

HtmlCompat.fromHtml("<b>HTML</b>", HtmlCompat.FROM_HTML_MODE_LEGACY)

HtmlCompat docs

Method 5

If you are lucky enough to develop on Kotlin,
just create an extension function:

fun String.toSpanned(): Spanned {
    if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= Build.VERSION_CODES.N) {
        return Html.fromHtml(this, Html.FROM_HTML_MODE_LEGACY)
    } else {
        @Suppress("DEPRECATION")
        return Html.fromHtml(this)
    }
}

And then it’s so sweet to use it everywhere: 

yourTextView.text = anyString.toSpanned()

Method 6

fromHtml

This method was deprecated in API level 24.

You should use FROM_HTML_MODE_LEGACY

Separate block-level elements with blank lines (two newline
characters) in between. This is the legacy behavior prior to N.

Code

if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= 24)
        {
            etOBJ.setText(Html.fromHtml("Intellij n Amiyo",Html.FROM_HTML_MODE_LEGACY));

         }
 else
        {
           etOBJ.setText(Html.fromHtml("Intellij n Amiyo"));
        }

For Kotlin

fun setTextHTML(html: String): Spanned
    {
        val result: Spanned = if (android.os.Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= android.os.Build.VERSION_CODES.N) {
            Html.fromHtml(html, Html.FROM_HTML_MODE_LEGACY)
        } else {
            Html.fromHtml(html)
        }
        return result
    }

Call

 txt_OBJ.text  = setTextHTML("IIT Amiyo")

Method 7

If you’re using Kotlin, I achieved this by using a Kotlin extension:

fun TextView.htmlText(text: String){
    if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= Build.VERSION_CODES.N) {
        setText(Html.fromHtml(text, Html.FROM_HTML_MODE_LEGACY))
    } else {
        setText(Html.fromHtml(text))
    }
}

Then call it like:

textView.htmlText(yourHtmlText)

Method 8

From official doc :

fromHtml(String) method was deprecated in API level 24. use fromHtml(String, int)
instead.

  1. TO_HTML_PARAGRAPH_LINES_CONSECUTIVE Option for toHtml(Spanned, int): Wrap consecutive lines of text delimited by 'n' inside <p>
    elements.

  2. TO_HTML_PARAGRAPH_LINES_INDIVIDUAL Option for toHtml(Spanned, int): Wrap each line of text delimited by 'n' inside a <p> or a <li>
    element.

https://developer.android.com/reference/android/text/Html.html

Method 9

Just to extend the answer from @Rockney and @k2col the improved code can look like:

@NonNull
public static Spanned fromHtml(@NonNull String html) {
    if (CompatUtils.isApiNonLowerThan(VERSION_CODES.N)) {
        return Html.fromHtml(html, Html.FROM_HTML_MODE_LEGACY);
    } else {
        //noinspection deprecation
        return Html.fromHtml(html);
    }
}

Where the CompatUtils.isApiNonLowerThan:

public static boolean isApiNonLowerThan(int versionCode) {
    return Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= versionCode;
}

The difference is that there are no extra local variable and the deprecation is only in else branch. So this will not suppress all method but single branch.

It can help when the Google will decide in some future versions of Android to deprecate even the fromHtml(String source, int flags) method.

Method 10

You can use 

//noinspection deprecation
return Html.fromHtml(source);

to suppress inspection just for single statement but not the whole method.

Method 11

Here is my solution. 

 if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= 24) {
        holder.notificationTitle.setText(Html.fromHtml(notificationSucces.getMessage(), Html.FROM_HTML_MODE_LEGACY));
    } else {
        holder.notificationTitle.setText(Html.fromHtml(notificationSucces.getMessage()));

    }

Method 12

just make a function :

public Spanned fromHtml(String str){
  return Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= 24 ? Html.fromHtml(str, Html.FROM_HTML_MODE_LEGACY) : Html.fromHtml(str);
}

Method 13

The framework class has been modified to require a flag to inform fromHtml() how to process line breaks. This was added in Nougat, and only touches on the challenge of incompatibilities of this class across versions of Android.

I’ve published a compatibility library to standardize and backport the class and include more callbacks for elements and styling:

https://github.com/Pixplicity/HtmlCompat

While it is similar to the framework’s Html class, some signature changes were required to allow more callbacks. Here’s the sample from the GitHub page:

Spanned fromHtml = HtmlCompat.fromHtml(context, source, 0);
// You may want to provide an ImageGetter, TagHandler and SpanCallback:
//Spanned fromHtml = HtmlCompat.fromHtml(context, source, 0,
//        imageGetter, tagHandler, spanCallback);
textView.setMovementMethod(LinkMovementMethod.getInstance());
textView.setText(fromHtml);

Method 14

Try the following to support basic html tags including ul ol li tags.
Create a Tag handler as shown below

import org.xml.sax.XMLReader;

import android.app.Activity;
import android.os.Bundle;
import android.text.Editable;
import android.text.Html;
import android.text.Html.TagHandler;
import android.util.Log;

public class MyTagHandler implements TagHandler {
    boolean first= true;
    String parent=null;
    int index=1;
    @Override
    public void handleTag(boolean opening, String tag, Editable output,
                          XMLReader xmlReader) {

        if(tag.equals("ul")) parent="ul";
        else if(tag.equals("ol")) parent="ol";
        if(tag.equals("li")){
            if(parent.equals("ul")){
                if(first){
                    output.append("nt•");
                    first= false;
                }else{
                    first = true;
                }
            }
            else{
                if(first){
                    output.append("nt"+index+". ");
                    first= false;
                    index++;
                }else{
                    first = true;
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

Set the text on Activity as shown below

@SuppressWarnings("deprecation")
    public void init(){
        try {
            TextView help = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.help);
            if (android.os.Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= android.os.Build.VERSION_CODES.N) {
                help.setText(Html.fromHtml(getString(R.string.help_html),Html.FROM_HTML_MODE_LEGACY, null, new MyTagHandler()));
            } else {
                help.setText(Html.fromHtml(getString(R.string.help_html), null, new MyTagHandler()));
            }
        } catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }

    }

And html text on resource string files as

<![CDATA[ …raw html data …]] >


All methods was sourced from stackoverflow.com or stackexchange.com, is licensed under cc by-sa 2.5, cc by-sa 3.0 and cc by-sa 4.0

Leave a Comment