Access to onscreen keyboard on Codea 4.0?

Questions
1

Hi,
I’m trying to update some of my works on Codea 3.x to Codea 4.0 and I found with this issue. How I can show/hide the onscreen keyboard? The classic way drops this error:

Error in call to setup():
Documents/Tgb/Main.lua:5: attempt to call a nil value (global ‘showKeyboard’)
stack traceback:
Documents/Tgb/Main.lua:5: in function ‘base.setup’

Thanks!

2

@oscampo - have you tried the built-in help in 4.0, it’s not complete but may cover the keyboard use. ?

Edit: could you show a little of your code to see the context ?

3

@Bri_G … yes I tried first the limited built-in help in 4.0… not much information indeed about how to use the keyboard to ask the user for an imput: (input - Codea 4.0 documentation)

In context I need some very simple as:

function setup()
showKeyboard()
inputText = “”
end

function draw()
background(40, 40, 50)
fill(255)
text(“Write something and press ENTER:”, WIDTH/2, HEIGHT/2 + 50)
text(inputText, WIDTH/2, HEIGHT/2)
end

function keyboard(key)
if key == RETURN then
hideKeyboard()
else
inputText = keyboardBuffer
end
end

how to implement this in Codea 4.0?

4

ok.. not the easy way with Codea 4.0, but I did this (it only works with an external keyboard):

-- Hello User App - Codea 4.0
local name, input, state = "", "", 0 -- 0=start, 1=typing, 2=greeting

function setup()
    style.font("Verdana")
    style.fontSize(24)
end

function draw()
    background(40, 40, 50)
    style.fill(255)
    style.textAlign(CENTER)
    style.textStyle(TEXT_NATIVE)
    
    if state == 0 then
        text("Tap screen to enter your name", WIDTH/2, HEIGHT/2 + 25)
        text("👆 Tap here", WIDTH/2, HEIGHT/2 - 25)
    elseif state == 1 then
        text("Enter your name:", WIDTH/2, HEIGHT/2 + 50)
        processInput()
        if input == "" then
            style.fill(150)
        else
            style.fill(100,200,255)
        end
        text(input == "" and "(type here)" or input, WIDTH/2, HEIGHT/2)
        style.fill(255)
        text("Press Enter when done", WIDTH/2, HEIGHT/2 - 50)
    else
        style.fill(100,255,100)
        style.fontSize(32)
        text("Hello, " .. (name == "" and "Anonymous" or name) .. "! 👋", WIDTH/2, HEIGHT/2)
        style.fontSize(18)
        style.fill(200)
        text("Tap to restart", WIDTH/2, HEIGHT/2 - 60)
    end
end

function touched(t)
    if t.state == BEGAN then
        state = state == 2 and 0 or (state == 0 and 1 or state)
        if state == 1 then input = "" end
        if state == 0 then name, input = "", "" end
        style.fontSize(24)
    end
end

function processInput()
    -- Letters
    for i = 97, 122 do
        local k = key[string.char(i)]
        if k and key.wasPressed(k) then
            local c = string.char(i)
            input = input .. (key.modifiersPressed(key.shift) and string.upper(c) or c)
        end
    end
    
    -- Numbers & special keys
    for i = 0, 9 do
        local k = key['num'..i]
        if k and key.wasPressed(k) then input = input .. i end
    end
    
    if key.wasPressed(key.space) then input = input .. " " end
    if key.wasPressed(key.backspace) and #input > 0 then
        input = string.sub(input, 1, #input - 1)
    end
    if key.wasPressed(key.enter) then
        name = input:match("^%s*(.-)%s*$")
        state = 2
    end
end

Is a very long version of a “Hello user” code… !!

1 Like
5

@oscampo - very neat, posted your problem on the Discord bugs website. @sim was already aware so hopefully will be resolved in near future.

Will test the external program you posted when I use my Mac tomorrow.

Thanks for the code.

6

The showKeyboard and hideKeyboard functions in 3.x are a bit of a hack. We weren’t sure whether to keep them

This API will get re-thought for 4.x. Off the top of my head, something more like:

keyboard.show()

keyboard.hide()

keyboard.textEntered = function (value)
    -- `value` is a string
end

keyboard.deleteBackward = function ()
    -- Delete
end

-- whatever has been entered so far using the software keyboard
keyboard.text
1 Like