Working with Text to Speech in Android

Posted By : Ravi Sharma | 03-May-2013

android

One of the many features that Android provides is the one of “speech synthesis”.

This is also known as “Text-To-Speech” (TTS) and is mainly the capability of the device to “speak” text of different languages.

In this blog I am going to show you how to quickly introduce TTS capabilities into your application.

Here is the xml file

	<RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"

	 xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools"

	 android:layout_width="match_parent"

	 android:layout_height="match_parent"

	 tools:context=".TTSActivity"

	 android:background="@drawable/canvas">

	
	    <EditText

	        android:id="@+id/enterText"

	        android:layout_width="fill_parent"

	        android:layout_height="wrap_content"

	        android:layout_alignParentLeft="true"

	        android:layout_alignParentTop="true"

	        android:layout_marginTop="105dp"

	        android:ems="10"        

	        android:textColor="#ffffff" >

	      
	    </EditText>

	

	    <TextView

	        android:id="@+id/textView"

	        android:layout_width="wrap_content"

	        android:layout_height="wrap_content"

	        android:layout_alignParentTop="true"

	        android:layout_centerHorizontal="true"

	        android:layout_marginTop="46dp"

	        android:text="Enter text below :-"

	        android:textSize="30dp"

	        android:textColor="#ffffff"/>

	

	    <Button

	        android:id="@+id/speakButton"

	        android:layout_width="150dp"

	        android:layout_height="70dp"

	        android:layout_centerHorizontal="true"

	        android:layout_centerVertical="true"

	        android:background="#2C70A0"

	        android:text="Speak" />

	

	</RelativeLayout>

Three basic views are used edittext, textview, button.

And, here is the TTS Activity.

	package com.example.texttospeech;

	

	import android.os.Bundle;

	import android.app.Activity;

	import android.speech.tts.TextToSpeech;

	import android.speech.tts.TextToSpeech.OnInitListener;

	import android.view.Menu;

	import android.view.View;

	import android.widget.Button;

	import android.widget.EditText;

	import android.widget.Toast;

	

	public class TTSActivity extends Activity implements OnInitListener {

	    TextToSpeech talker;

	    EditText enteredText;

	    Button speak;

	    String text;

	

	    @Override

	    protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {

	        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);

	        setContentView(R.layout.activity_tts);

	        speak = (Button) findViewById(R.id.speakButton);

	        enteredText = (EditText) findViewById(R.id.enterText);

	        talker = new TextToSpeech(this, this);

	

	    }

	

	    @Override

	    public void onInit(int arg0) {

	

	        if (arg0 == TextToSpeech.SUCCESS) {

	            speak.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() {

	

	                public void onClick(View arg0) {

	                    text = enteredText.getText().toString();

	                    talker.speak(text, TextToSpeech.QUEUE_FLUSH, null);

	                }

	            });

	

	        }

	    }

	

	}

In this activity whatever is entered in edittext you can hear that back by clicking on button.

Just implement the OnInitListener interface, within onInit method the check

if (arg0 == TextToSpeech.SUCCESS) ,

is very important since it might take some time for tts for initialisation so if this argument turns to be true only then you will be able to hear speech.

That's it. Hope it helps.

Here is the snapshot of working code.