Android How to Integrate Emojis Keyboard in your App

Emojis 😛 are amazing way to express our feeling and deliver our thoughts that people with deferent languages can understand it even children’s can understand it. Any popular social network application provide you a set of Emojis. Take a look at your last messages to see how much you are using them. It’s very important to have them in your applications. Android OS can render Emojis on Text fields.

This article explains how to integrate emojis keyboard into your app easily with many customization options using SuperNova-Emoji library.

1. Simple Integration

Below is the syntax of a simple integration for Emojis Keyboard. The EmojiIconActions constructer accept four parameters, Context, RootView, EmojiconEditText, and ImageView. 
Usually passing the parent layout as RootView is the best option to show the Emojis Keyboard above all views.
 The EmojiconEditText is a EditText with more custom attributes to enable emojis rendering. 
And the last parameter the ImageView will used to switch between the normal keyboard and the emojis keyboard.

To display emojis in TextView we will use EmojiconTextView which is also a TextView with more custom attributes to enable emojis rendering



EmojIconActions emojIcon= new EmojIconActions(this, rootView, emojiconEditText, 
                            emojiImageView);


emojIcon.ShowEmojIcon();



If you want to use it in xml layout, we will use EmojiconEditText instead of the normal EditText.

<hani.momanii.supernova_emoji_library.Helper.EmojiconEditText
    android:id="@+id/emojicon_edit_text"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    emojicon:emojiconSize="28sp" />

And EmojiconTextView instead of TextView

<hani.momanii.supernova_emoji_library.Helper.EmojiconTextView
    android:id="@+id/emojicon_text_view"
    android:layout_width="wrap_content"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    emojicon:emojiconSize="28sp"/>



2. Change the default Toggle Icon

For switching between normal keyboard and emojis keyboard, 
you can call setIconsIds() method which takes two parameters, keyboard Icon ID and smiley Icon ID.

emojIcon.setIconsIds(R.drawable.ic_action_keyboard,R.drawable.smiley);

3. Using device default Emojis

SuperNove-Emoji allow you to use device emojis ins simple way, you need to set the boolean value of setUseSystemEmoji() and setUseSystemDefault() methods to TRUE in every EmojiconTextView and EmojiconEditText you use to display the emojis.

emojIcon.setUseSystemEmoji(true);
textView.setUseSystemDefault(true);

emojiconEditText.setUseSystemDefault(true);



Xml attribute:

emojicon:emojiconUseSystemDefault="true"


4. Changing Emojis Size

In order to change Emojis size, 
you have to change the text size by setting the value of setEmojiconSize() method.

textView.setEmojiconSize(30);

XML code


emojicon:emojiconSize="28sp"

5. Detect When the Keyboard Opened or closed

SuperNova-Emoji let you detect when the user open the keyboard or close it to take some actions if needed like show some views when the keyboard open and hide it when the keyboard closed. Use the below code block to achieve this.

emojIcon.setKeyboardListener(new EmojIconActions.KeyboardListener() {
            @Override
            public void onKeyboardOpen() {
                Log.i("Keyboard","open");
            }

            @Override
            public void onKeyboardClose() {
                Log.i("Keyboard","close");
            }
        });

6. Changing the Emoji Keyboard colors to match your app theme

You can set three colors to the emojis keyboard by adding three parameters to the constructer which they are pressed tabs icons color, tabs color, and background color. 
We will use the same above constructer with the colors value.


EmojIconActions emojIcon= new EmojIconActions(this, rootView, emojiconEditText, emojiImageView,
"#F44336","#e8e8e8","#f4f4f4");


emojIcon.ShowEmojIcon();


7. Creating Sample App

Now we’ll create a simple app integrating the emojis to get a good understanding of it in a real app.

1. In Android Studio, go to File ⇒ New Project and fill all the details required to create a new project.

2. Open build.gradle and add supernova emoji library. You need to add its maven repository too.

repositories {
    maven { url "https://dl.bintray.com/hani-momanii/maven"}
}

dependencies {
    .
    .
    .
    // Supernova Emoji
    compile 'hani.momanii.supernova_emoji_library:supernova-emoji-library:0.0.2'
}

3. Open the layout file your main activity activity_main.xml and add below code. Here you can see that I have added the emojiconEditText, emojiconTextView and the ImageView.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    xmlns:emojicon="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto"
    xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools"
    android:id="@+id/root_view"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="match_parent"
    android:paddingBottom="@dimen/activity_vertical_margin"
    android:paddingLeft="@dimen/activity_horizontal_margin"
    android:paddingRight="@dimen/activity_horizontal_margin"
    android:paddingTop="@dimen/activity_vertical_margin"
    tools:context="info.androidhive.emojis.MainActivity">

    <ImageView
        android:id="@+id/emoji_btn"
        android:layout_width="40dp"
        android:layout_height="40dp"
        android:layout_alignParentBottom="true"
        android:layout_alignParentLeft="true"
        android:padding="4dp"
        android:src="@drawable/ic_insert_emoticon_black_24dp" />

    <ImageView
        android:id="@+id/submit_btn"
        android:layout_width="40dp"
        android:layout_height="40dp"
        android:layout_alignParentBottom="true"
        android:layout_alignParentRight="true"
        android:padding="4dp"
        android:src="@android:drawable/ic_menu_send" />

    <hani.momanii.supernova_emoji_library.Helper.EmojiconEditText
        android:id="@+id/emojicon_edit_text"
        android:layout_width="match_parent"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:layout_alignParentBottom="true"
        android:layout_toLeftOf="@id/submit_btn"
        android:layout_toRightOf="@id/emoji_btn"
        emojicon:emojiconSize="28sp" />


    <CheckBox
        android:id="@+id/use_system_default"
        android:layout_width="wrap_content"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:layout_below="@+id/textView"
        android:layout_centerHorizontal="true"
        android:checked="false"
        android:text="Use System Default?" />

    <hani.momanii.supernova_emoji_library.Helper.EmojiconTextView
        android:id="@+id/textView"
        android:layout_width="wrap_content"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:layout_centerHorizontal="true"
        android:layout_centerVertical="true"
        android:layout_marginTop="26dp"
        android:text="Hello Emojis!"
        android:textAppearance="@style/TextAppearance.AppCompat.Large"
        android:textColor="#000000"
        emojicon:emojiconSize="45sp"
        emojicon:emojiconUseSystemDefault="true" />
</RelativeLayout>

4. Now open MainActivity.java and make the changes as mentioned below. This activity show the different scenarios of implementing the SuperNova-Emoji as explained above.

package info.androidhive.emojis;

import android.os.Bundle;
import android.support.v7.app.AppCompatActivity;
import android.util.Log;
import android.view.View;
import android.widget.CheckBox;
import android.widget.CompoundButton;
import android.widget.ImageView;

import hani.momanii.supernova_emoji_library.Actions.EmojIconActions;
import hani.momanii.supernova_emoji_library.Helper.EmojiconEditText;
import hani.momanii.supernova_emoji_library.Helper.EmojiconTextView;

public class MainActivity extends AppCompatActivity {

    private static final String TAG = MainActivity.class.getSimpleName();
    CheckBox mCheckBox;
    EmojiconEditText emojiconEditText;
    EmojiconTextView textView;
    ImageView emojiImageView;
    ImageView submitButton;
    View rootView;
    EmojIconActions emojIcon;

    @Override
    protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);
        rootView = findViewById(R.id.root_view);
        emojiImageView = (ImageView) findViewById(R.id.emoji_btn);
        submitButton = (ImageView) findViewById(R.id.submit_btn);
        mCheckBox = (CheckBox) findViewById(R.id.use_system_default);
        emojiconEditText = (EmojiconEditText) findViewById(R.id.emojicon_edit_text);
        textView = (EmojiconTextView) findViewById(R.id.textView);
        emojIcon = new EmojIconActions(this, rootView, emojiconEditText, emojiImageView);
        emojIcon.ShowEmojIcon();
        emojIcon.setIconsIds(R.drawable.ic_action_keyboard, R.drawable.smiley);
        emojIcon.setKeyboardListener(new EmojIconActions.KeyboardListener() {
            @Override
            public void onKeyboardOpen() {
                Log.e(TAG, "Keyboard opened!");
            }

            @Override
            public void onKeyboardClose() {
                Log.e(TAG, "Keyboard closed");
            }
        });

        mCheckBox.setOnCheckedChangeListener(new CompoundButton.OnCheckedChangeListener() {
            @Override
            public void onCheckedChanged(CompoundButton compoundButton, boolean b) {
                emojIcon.setUseSystemEmoji(b);
                textView.setUseSystemDefault(b);

            }
        });


        submitButton.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() {
            @Override
            public void onClick(View v) {
                String newText = emojiconEditText.getText().toString();
                textView.setText(newText);
            }
        });
    }
}

Run And test the app.

Hani Momanii

Hani is passionate about coding, Android Development, contributing to Opensource communities and actively competing in hackathons. focusing on making Android Developer life easier.