# Html class - basic usage

From time to time, there is a need to display some styled text in an Android application. You can always use [Spans](https://flavienlaurent.com/blog/2014/01/31/spans/) to achieve your goals, but if you know HTML, you could consider using `[Html](https://developer.android.com/reference/android/text/Html.html "Html class")` class.

The `Html` class with `[ImageGetter](https://developer.android.com/reference/android/text/Html.ImageGetter.html "ImageGetter interface")` and `[TagHandler](https://developer.android.com/reference/android/text/Html.TagHandler.html "TagHandler interface")` interfaces is used to convert HTML strings into styled text. At the time of writing `Html` class contains four static methods:

```java
static String escapeHtml(CharSequence text);
static Spanned fromHtml(String source);
static Spanned fromHtml(String source, Html.ImageGetter imageGetter, Html.TagHandler tagHandler);
static String toHtml(Spanned text);
```

The first method allows us to get an HTML-escaped representation of given plain text. The fourth we can use when we want to get an HTML representation of the provided `Spanned` text. `fromHtml` methods return styled text (`Spanned`) from provided HTML string. You may wonder, how does it work? As you can find at [https://grepcode.com](https://grepcode.com/file/repository.grepcode.com/java/ext/com.google.android/android/5.1.1_r1/android/text/Html.java#Html) `Html` class parses HTML strings using [TagSoup](https://home.ccil.org/~cowan/tagsoup/) which is a SAX-compliant parser written in Java.

In this post, I will focus on the second method because, in my opinion, it is used most of the time. Let’s assume that we would like to display the following text:

![](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1740738888404/a07fa69c-0cf3-4ed5-b5f2-3e7d5c396b74.png align="center")

Creating `Span`s manually can be cumbersome so let’s use a `fromHtml` method.

First of all, we have to create an HTML representation of our text:

```xml
<b>Lorem ipsum dolor</b> sit <u>amet</u>, consectetur <font color="green">adipiscing</font> elit. <i>Cras ut magna eget erat fermentum dignissim.</i> Aenean interdum ultrices sapien<sup>1</sup>. <font color="red">Vestibulum feugiat ultrices neque, vel pretium massa. Etiam tempor luctus dui eget aliquam.</font> In nec metus sit amet orci facilisis pretium.
```

next, we put it into a `string.xml` file:

```xml
<string name="lorem"><![CDATA[<b>Lorem ipsum dolor</b> sit <u>amet</u>, consectetur <font color="green">adipiscing</font> elit. <i>Cras ut magna eget erat fermentum dignissim.</i> Aenean interdum ultrices sapien<sup>1</sup>. <font color="red">Vestibulum feugiat ultrices neque, vel pretium massa. Etiam tempor luctus dui eget aliquam.</font> In nec metus sit amet orci facilisis pretium.]]></string>
```

in the `*Activity.java` file we use the `Html` class:

```java
TextView textView = ...;
String string = getString(R.string.lorem);
Spanned spanned = Html.fromHtml(string);
textView.setText(spanned);
```

and voilà:

![](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1740738988011/9b2c3af7-00cc-453b-99fe-dfc6d01da52e.png align="left")

If you would like to know what other methods return, I’m attaching snippets.

`escapedHtml` method returns:

```xml
&lt;b&gt;Lorem ipsum dolor&lt;/b&gt; sit &lt;u&gt;amet&lt;/u&gt;, consectetur &lt;font color=green&gt;adipiscing&lt;/font&gt; elit. &lt;i&gt;Cras ut magna eget erat fermentum dignissim.&lt;/i&gt; Aenean interdum ultrices sapien&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;. &lt;font color=red&gt;Vestibulum feugiat ultrices neque, vel pretium massa. Etiam tempor luctus dui eget aliquam.&lt;/font&gt; In nec metus sit amet orci facilisis pretium.
```

and `toHtml` method returns:

```xml
<p dir="ltr"><b>Lorem ipsum dolor</b> sit <u>amet</u>, consectetur <font color ="#00ff00">adipiscing</font> elit. <i>Cras ut magna eget erat fermentum dignissim.</i> Aenean interdum ultrices sapien<sup>1</sup>. <font color ="#ff0000">Vestibulum feugiat ultrices neque, vel pretium massa. Etiam tempor luctus dui eget aliquam.</font> In nec metus sit amet orci facilisis pretium.</p>
```

Be aware that the Html class doesn’t support all HTML tags. Unfortunately, the documentation doesn’t say which are supported: [Issue 8640: Documentation which tags are supported by Html.fromHtml()](https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=8640). Thanks to Mark Murphy, you can find a list of supported tags in Android 2.1 on his blog: [HTML Tags Supported By TextView](https://commonsware.com/blog/Android/2010/05/26/html-tags-supported-by-textview.html). Besides, using [GrepCode](https://grepcode.com/file/repository.grepcode.com/java/ext/com.google.android/android/5.1.1_r1/android/text/Html.java#Html) you can always check it by yourself.

`fromHtml` method parses provided string so I advise not to invoke it on the UI thread when displaying longer text. Additionally, you should consider caching returned `Spanned` object (e.g. in lists).

In my next posts, I will explain how to use images and handle unsupported tags with the `Html` class.