Adding Voice Recognition in Description Dialog Box in Phimpme project

In this blog, I will explain how I added Voice Recognition in a dialog box to describe an image in Phimpme Android application. In Phimpme Android application we have an option to add a description for the image. Sometimes the description can be long. Adding Voice Recognition text to speech will ease the user’s experience to add a description for the image.

Adding appropriate Dialog Box

In order to take input from the user to prompt the Voice Recognition function, I have added an image button in the description dialog box. Since the description dialog box will only contain an EditText and a button will have used material design to make it look better and add caption on top of it.

 

<LinearLayout
   android:id="@+id/rl_description_dialog"
   android:layout_width="match_parent"
   android:layout_height="wrap_content"
   android:orientation="horizontal"
   android:padding="15dp">
   <EditText
       android:id="@+id/description_edittxt"
       android:layout_weight="1"
       android:layout_width="fill_parent"
       android:layout_height="wrap_content"
       android:padding="15dp"
       android:hint="@string/description_hint"
       android:textColorHint="@color/grey"
       android:layout_margin="20dp"
       android:gravity="top|left"
       android:inputType="text" />
   <ImageButton
       android:layout_width="@dimen/mic_image"
       android:layout_height="@dimen/mic_image"
       android:layout_alignRight="@+id/description_edittxt"
       app2:srcCompat="@drawable/ic_mic_black"
       android:layout_gravity="center"
       android:background="@color/transparent"
       android:paddingEnd="10dp"
       android:paddingTop="12dp"
       android:id="@+id/voice_input"/>
</LinearLayout>

Function to prompt dialog box

We have added a function to prompt the dialog box from anywhere in the application. getDescriptionDialog() function is used to prompt the description dialog box. getDescriptionDialog() returns EditText which can be further be used to manipulate the text in the EditText. Please follow the following steps to inflate description dialog box in the activity.

First,

In the getDescriptionDialog() function we will inflate the layout by using getLayoutInflater function. We will pass the layout id as an argument in the function.

public EditText getDescriptionDialog(final ThemedActivity activity, AlertDialog.Builder descriptionDialog){
final View DescriptiondDialogLayout = activity.getLayoutInflater().inflate(R.layout.dialog_description, null);

Second,

Get the TextView in the description dialog box.

final TextView DescriptionDialogTitle = (TextView) DescriptiondDialogLayout.findViewById(R.id.description_dialog_title);

Third,

Present the dialog using cardview to make use of the material design. Then take an instance of the EditText. This EditText can be further used to input text from the user either by text or Voice Recognition.

final CardView DescriptionDialogCard = (CardView) DescriptiondDialogLayout.findViewById(R.id.description_dialog_card);
EditText editxtDescription = (EditText) DescriptiondDialogLayout.findViewById(R.id.description_edittxt);

Fourth,

Set onClickListener when the user clicks the mic image icon. This onClicklistener will prompt the voice Recognition in the activity. We need to specify the language for the speech to text input. In the case of Phimpme its English so “en-US”. We have set the maximum results to 15.  

ImageButton VoiceRecognition = (ImageButton) DescriptiondDialogLayout.findViewById(R.id.voice_input);
VoiceRecognition.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() {
   @Override
   public void onClick(View v) {
       // This are the intents needed to start the Voice recognizer
       Intent i = new Intent(RecognizerIntent.ACTION_RECOGNIZE_SPEECH);
       i.putExtra(RecognizerIntent.EXTRA_LANGUAGE_MODEL, "en-US");
       i.putExtra(RecognizerIntent.EXTRA_MAX_RESULTS, 15); // number of maximum results..
       i.putExtra(RecognizerIntent.EXTRA_PROMPT, R.string.caption_speak);
       startActivityForResult(i, REQ_CODE_SPEECH_INPUT);

   }
});

Putting Text in the EditText

After Voice Recognition prompt ends the onActivityResult function checks to see if the data is received or not.

if (requestCode == REQ_CODE_SPEECH_INPUT && data!=null) {

We get the spoken text from intent data.getString() and store it in ArrayList. To store the received data in a string we need to get the first string from the ArrayList.

ArrayList<String> result = data
       .getStringArrayListExtra(RecognizerIntent.EXTRA_RESULTS);
voiceInput = result.get(0);

Setting the received data in the the EditText

editTextDescription.setText(voiceInput);

Conclusion

Using Voice recognition is a quick and simple way to add a long description on the image. It’s Speech to Text feature works without many mistakes and is useful in our Phimpme Android application.

Github

https://github.com/fossasia/phimpme-android

Resources

Tutorial for speech to Text: https://www.androidhive.info/2014/07/android-speech-to-text-tutorial/

To add description dialog box: https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/dialogs.html

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