Best Practice: Input Validation (Android)

This java class implement text watcher to watch your edit text if its given any change to the text

public abstract class TextValidator implements TextWatcher {
    private final TextView textView;

    public TextValidator(TextView textView) {
        this.textView = textView;
    }

    public abstract void validate(TextView textView, String text);

    @Override
    final public void afterTextChanged(Editable s) {
        String text = textView.getText().toString();
        validate(textView, text);
    }

    @Override
    final public void beforeTextChanged(CharSequence s, int start, int count, int after) { /* Don't care */ }

    @Override
    final public void onTextChanged(CharSequence s, int start, int before, int count) { /* Don't care */ }
}

And in your edit text, you can set that text watcher to its listener

editText.addTextChangedListener(new TextValidator(editText) {
    @Override public void validate(TextView textView, String text) {
       /* Validation code here */
    }
});

Yes, you can create a class / Java file specifically for containing methods relating to checking validity of Strings. That class could contain static methods taking a String as input, and returning a boolean whether or not the String is valid. This would be a good practice if you needed to call the same validation method for multiple inputs, and if you have multiple validation methods.

example:

class StringValidation {

    public static boolean validateLogin(String text) {
       if (text.contains("@")) {
         return true;
       } else {
         return false;
       }
    }

}

One approach (which I am using) is you should have a helper for validating inputs such as:

1. Nullity (or emptiness)
2. Dates
3. Passwords
4. Emails
5. Numerical values
6. and others

here's an exerpt from my ValidationHelper class:

public class InputValidatorHelper {
    public boolean isValidEmail(String string){
        final String EMAIL_PATTERN = "^[_A-Za-z0-9-\\+]+(\\.[_A-Za-z0-9-]+)*@[A-Za-z0-9-]+(\\.[A-Za-z0-9]+)*(\\.[A-Za-z]{2,})$";
        Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile(EMAIL_PATTERN);
        Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(string);
        return matcher.matches();
    }

    public boolean isValidPassword(String string, boolean allowSpecialChars){
        String PATTERN;
        if(allowSpecialChars){
            //PATTERN = "((?=.*\\d)(?=.*[a-z])(?=.*[A-Z])(?=.*[@#$%]).{6,20})";
            PATTERN = "^[a-zA-Z@#$%]\\w{5,19}$";
        }else{
            //PATTERN = "((?=.*\\d)(?=.*[a-z])(?=.*[A-Z]).{6,20})";
            PATTERN = "^[a-zA-Z]\\w{5,19}$";
        }



        Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile(PATTERN);
        Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(string);
        return matcher.matches();
    }

    public boolean isNullOrEmpty(String string){
        return TextUtils.isEmpty(string);
    }

    public boolean isNumeric(String string){
        return TextUtils.isDigitsOnly(string);
    }

    //Add more validators here if necessary
}

Now the way I use this class is this:

InputValidatorHelper inputValidatorHelper = new InputValidatorHelper();
StringBuilder errMsg = new StringBuilder("Unable to save. Please fix the following errors and try again.\n");
//Validate and Save
boolean allowSave = true;
if (user.getEmail() == null && !inputValidatorHelper.isValidEmail(user_email)) {
    errMsg.append("- Invalid email address.\n");
    allowSave = false;
}

if (inputValidatorHelper.isNullOrEmpty(user_first_name)) {
    errMsg.append("- First name should not be empty.\n");
    allowSave = false;
}

if(allowSave){
    //Proceed with your save logic here
}

You can call your validation by using TextWatcher which is attached via EditText#addTextChangedListener

example:

txtName.addTextChangedListener(new TextWatcher() {
    @Override
    public void beforeTextChanged(CharSequence s, int start, int count, int after) {
        //Do nothing
    }

    @Override
    public void onTextChanged(CharSequence s, int start, int before, int count) {

    }

    @Override
    public void afterTextChanged(Editable s) {
        validate();
    }
});