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Reel Rookie

Focus Management Issue in Roku Channel - TextEditBox Not Receiving Focus

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I am developing my first Roku channel and facing an issue with focus management. I have a simple scene with two TextEditBox elements for Display ID and PIN, a Button, and a Label for error messages. The problem is that only the button seems to be receiving focus and working as expected. When I press the "Up" button on the remote, the focus index changes (as confirmed by debug statements), but the TextEditBox elements do not receive focus, and the on-screen keyboard does not appear.

Code Snippets:

helloworld.xml:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<component name="HelloWorld" extends="Scene">
    <children>
        <!-- Label for Display ID -->
        <Label
            id="displayIdLabel"
            text="Display ID:"
            translation="[100, 100]"
            height="40"
            width="300"
            font="font:MediumBoldSystemFont"
        />

        <!-- TextEditBox for Display ID -->
        <TextEditBox
            id="displayIdBox"
            translation="[400, 100]"
            height="40"
            width="300"
            focusable="true"
        />

        <!-- Label for PIN -->
        <Label
            id="pinLabel"
            text="PIN:"
            translation="[100, 200]"
            height="40"
            width="300"
            font="font:MediumBoldSystemFont"
        />

        <!-- TextEditBox for PIN -->
        <TextEditBox
            id="pinBox"
            translation="[400, 200]"
            height="40"
            width="300"
            focusable="true"
        />

        <!-- Enter Button -->
        <Button
            id="enterButton"
            text="Enter"
            translation="[300, 300]"
            height="40"
            focusable="true"
        />

        <!-- Label for Error Messages -->
        <Label
            id="errorMessage"
            text=""
            translation="[100, 400]"
            height="40"
            width="600"
            font="font:MediumBoldSystemFont"
            color="0xFF0000"
        />
    </children>
<!-- BrightScript Portion -->
<script type="text/brightscript" uri="pkg:/components/helloworld.brs" />
<!-- End of BrightScript Portion -->
</component>

helloworld.brs:
sub init()
    m.top.setFocus(true) ' Set focus to the scene to enable key events
    m.focusIndex = 0 ' Initialize focus index

    ' Get references to UI elements
    m.displayIdBox = m.top.findNode("displayIdBox")
    m.pinBox = m.top.findNode("pinBox")
    m.enterButton = m.top.findNode("enterButton")

    ' Observe button selection
    m.enterButton.observeField("buttonSelected", "onEnterButtonClicked")

   
    ' Observe TextEditBox focus
    m.displayIdBox.observeField("focusedChild", "onTextEditBoxFocused")
    m.pinBox.observeField("focusedChild", "onTextEditBoxFocused")
end sub

' Called when the TextEditBox is focused
sub onTextEditBoxFocused()
    ' Your logic here to open keyboard
    print "TextEditBox focused!"
end sub


' Called when the Enter button is clicked
sub onEnterButtonClicked()
    ' Your logic here
    print "Enter button clicked!"
end sub

' Function to handle key events
function onKeyEvent(key as String, press as Boolean) as Boolean
    handled = false
    if press then
        if key = "up"
            m.focusIndex = (m.focusIndex - 1 + 3) mod 3
            shiftFocus()
            handled = true
            print "Current Focus Index: "; m.focusIndex
        else if key = "down"
            m.focusIndex = (m.focusIndex + 1) mod 3
            shiftFocus()
            handled = true
            print "Current Focus Index: "; m.focusIndex
        else if key = "OK"
            ' Your logic for OK key
            handled = true
        end if
    end if
    return handled
end function

' Function to shift focus based on m.focusIndex
sub shiftFocus()
    if m.focusIndex = 0
        m.displayIdBox.setFocus(true)
    else if m.focusIndex = 1
        m.pinBox.setFocus(true)
    else if m.focusIndex = 2
        m.enterButton.setFocus(true)
    end if
end sub

sub loadImage(url as String)
    ' Create a Poster node to display the PNG
    m.poster = CreateObject("roSGNode", "Poster")
    m.poster.uri = url
    m.poster.translation = [0, 0]
    m.poster.width = 1920 ' Full screen width
    m.poster.height = 1080 ' Full screen height

    ' Add the Poster to the scene
    m.top.appendChild(m.poster)
end sub

Troubleshooting Steps Taken:

  1. Set focusable="true" for TextEditBox and Button.
  2. Used observeField to listen for button clicks.
  3. Added debug statements to confirm focus index changes.

Questions:

  1. How can I ensure that the TextEditBox elements receive focus?
  2. Why is the on-screen keyboard not appearing for TextEditBox elements?
  3. Is there anything wrong with my focus management logic?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

 
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1 Solution

Accepted Solutions
sanity-check
Roku Guru

Re: Focus Management Issue in Roku Channel - TextEditBox Not Receiving Focus

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This isn't directly answering your question, but if you're expecting a keyboard to appear automatically when the TextEditBox is focused, you'll be disappointed.

The way I tend to handle these forms is to display the field contents on buttons (disguised/extended to look like text inputs), then when these are selected I pop up an overlay containing a Keyboard (or DynamicKeyboard/etc as cert requriments + functionality demand) to do the actual text entry. An "OK" button dismisses the keyboard and I populate the button with the updated text. A "StandardKeyboardDialog" could work if you don't have a fussy designer involved.

 

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4 REPLIES 4
sanity-check
Roku Guru

Re: Focus Management Issue in Roku Channel - TextEditBox Not Receiving Focus

Jump to solution

This isn't directly answering your question, but if you're expecting a keyboard to appear automatically when the TextEditBox is focused, you'll be disappointed.

The way I tend to handle these forms is to display the field contents on buttons (disguised/extended to look like text inputs), then when these are selected I pop up an overlay containing a Keyboard (or DynamicKeyboard/etc as cert requriments + functionality demand) to do the actual text entry. An "OK" button dismisses the keyboard and I populate the button with the updated text. A "StandardKeyboardDialog" could work if you don't have a fussy designer involved.

 

sanity-check
Roku Guru

Re: Focus Management Issue in Roku Channel - TextEditBox Not Receiving Focus

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Oh, also - maybe more useful:

Try

m.top.observeField("focusedChild", "onFocusedChildChanged")

...that should call a function whenever focus changes - I don't think you'll get anything from observing focusedChild on an actual child.

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Reel Rookie

Re: Focus Management Issue in Roku Channel - TextEditBox Not Receiving Focus

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Got it, so this is nothing like android development lol. 😆

It's funny because I asked the big 3 AI's and chatgpt swore up and down it should automatically popup when focused. Bing wasn't sure what to do. And bard hallucinated and said there was a "JavaScript" keyboard that could be ran in the brightscript.

 

I will go ahead and try out your solution and let you know. Thank you for the assistance!

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sanity-check
Roku Guru

Re: Focus Management Issue in Roku Channel - TextEditBox Not Receiving Focus

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Yeah, welcome to the wild west!

Roku dev is too niche for ChatGPT etc to be competent, I think - Stack Overflow is not that useful either, which is related.

There's a Slack chat which people find helpful (it gets linked from these forums fairly often) but I prefer to leave answers which are easily searchable in future so I haven't looked in on that. Maybe I need to rethink my opposition to siloed content in the age of AI though...

Good luck

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