Detect delete button in soft keyboard

Question

I have two EditText (each only only accepts one character) and I want to handle both fields like I had only one.

I'm using a TextWatcher to set the focus in the second one when the user writes a character in the first one, but I don't know how to do the opposite.

If the user press the delete button in the second EditText (being this EditText empty) I want to move the focus to the first EditText and delete the character there.

The problem is that TextWatcher doesn't work when the user tries to delete an empty field (because in fact nothing is changing). And onKeyDown event only works with hard keyboards so I don't have any idea of how to deal with this problem...

Thanks!

Answer 1

Possible duplicate of Android EditText delete(backspace) key event

just checked the code from that question (which actually come from the provided question and answered by Labeeb P) with the test project with just two edits on layout and it seems to work just fine - I'm able to receive delete even if edit is empty.

    final EditText edit1 = (EditText) findViewById(R.id.editText1);

    edit1.setOnKeyListener(new View.OnKeyListener() {
        @Override
        public boolean onKey(View v, int keyCode, KeyEvent event) {
            // You can identify which key pressed buy checking keyCode value
            // with KeyEvent.KEYCODE_
            if (keyCode == KeyEvent.KEYCODE_DEL) {
                // this is for backspace
                Log.e("IME_TEST", "DEL KEY");
            }
            return false;
        }
    });

Seems android documentation of EditText should be made more clear or at least any guide for EditText - Soft Keyboard interaction provided, because there many typical ones whose should be worked out by nearly every developer.

UPDATE: Seems this way doesn't work on latest (at least after 4.1) Android versions. This answer seems to work on versions after 4.1.