Android TextView with Clickable Links: how to capture clicks?

Based upon another answer, here's a function setTextViewHTML() which parses the links out of a HTML string and makes them clickable, and then lets you respond to the URL.

protected void makeLinkClickable(SpannableStringBuilder strBuilder, final URLSpan span)
{
    int start = strBuilder.getSpanStart(span);
    int end = strBuilder.getSpanEnd(span);
    int flags = strBuilder.getSpanFlags(span);
    ClickableSpan clickable = new ClickableSpan() {
        public void onClick(View view) {
            // Do something with span.getURL() to handle the link click...
        }
    };
    strBuilder.setSpan(clickable, start, end, flags);
    strBuilder.removeSpan(span);
}

protected void setTextViewHTML(TextView text, String html)
{
    CharSequence sequence = Html.fromHtml(html);
    SpannableStringBuilder strBuilder = new SpannableStringBuilder(sequence);
    URLSpan[] urls = strBuilder.getSpans(0, sequence.length(), URLSpan.class);   
    for(URLSpan span : urls) {
        makeLinkClickable(strBuilder, span);
    }
    text.setText(strBuilder);
    text.setMovementMethod(LinkMovementMethod.getInstance());       
}

I made an easy extension function in Kotlin to catch url link clicks in a TextView by applying a new callback to URLSpan elements.

strings.xml (example link in text)

<string name="link_string">this is my link: <a href="https://www.google.com/">CLICK</a></string>

Make sure your spanned text is set to the TextView before you call "handleUrlClicks"

textView.text = getString(R.string.link_string)

This is the extension function:

/**
 * Searches for all URLSpans in current text replaces them with our own ClickableSpans
 * forwards clicks to provided function.
 */
fun TextView.handleUrlClicks(onClicked: ((String) -> Unit)? = null) {
    //create span builder and replaces current text with it
    text = SpannableStringBuilder.valueOf(text).apply {
        //search for all URL spans and replace all spans with our own clickable spans
        getSpans(0, length, URLSpan::class.java).forEach {
            //add new clickable span at the same position
            setSpan(
                object : ClickableSpan() {
                    override fun onClick(widget: View) {
                        onClicked?.invoke(it.url)
                    }
                },
                getSpanStart(it),
                getSpanEnd(it),
                Spanned.SPAN_INCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE
            )
            //remove old URLSpan
            removeSpan(it)
        }
    }
    //make sure movement method is set
    movementMethod = LinkMovementMethod.getInstance()
}

This is how I call it:

textView.handleUrlClicks { url ->
    Timber.d("click on found span: $url")
}