Hello @Metalmate

I have tested your case under API 19, 22 and 23 and indeed the focus does not work.

However consider the Android specific behaviour for the native showSoftInput() method.
It will trigger automatically when you navigate to a page with a searchBar and will open the software keyboard
(on emulators you should enable soft-keyboard from settings in order this to work)

Hello @NickIliev

In our app we only show the searchbar when it is toggeled by pressing a search-icon in the navigation bar. And indeed, Android opens de keyboard by default, but not when the searchbar is set to visible programatically.

On iOS the .focus() opens the keyboard.

github repo to reproduce : https://github.com/NickIliev/issue_1973

This appears to be some kind of Android bug: https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=25812

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/23380123/why-android-inputmethodmanager-showsoftinput-returns-false

@Metalmate
I have created a workaround for this Android bug. Here is what you can do:

<Page xmlns="http://schemas.nativescript.org/tns.xsd">
  <StackLayout>
    <Button text="Toggle SearchBar Visibility" tap="onTap" />
    <Button text="searchBar.dismissSoftInput()" tap="onDismissSoftInput" />
    <SearchBar id="searchBar" visibility="collapse" />
  </StackLayout>
</Page>

import { EventData } from "data/observable";
import { Page } from "ui/page";
import { SearchBar } from "ui/search-bar";
import enums = require("ui/enums");
import utils = require("utils/utils")

declare var android;
export function onTap(args: EventData) {
    let searchBar = (<Page>(<any>args.object).page).getViewById<SearchBar>("searchBar");

    if (searchBar.visibility === enums.Visibility.collapse){
        searchBar.visibility = enums.Visibility.visible;
        searchBar.focus();
        if (searchBar.android){
            let imm = utils.ad.getInputMethodManager();
            if (imm){
                imm.toggleSoftInput(android.view.inputmethod.InputMethodManager.SHOW_IMPLICIT, 0);
            }
        }
    }
    else {
        searchBar.visibility = enums.Visibility.collapse;
    }
}

export function onDismissSoftInput(args: EventData) {
    let searchBar = (<Page>(<any>args.object).page).getViewById<SearchBar>("searchBar");
    searchBar.dismissSoftInput();
}

You can clone the entire sample app from here: https://github.com/hamorphis/issue-1973

@Metalmate Let me know if this workaround will do it for you so I can close the issue.

I’m closing this issue because it has been inactive for a few months.

somebody has a solution?

It's still an issue to this day, the workaround works for now but it state that the method toggleSoftInput Deprecated symbol used, consult docs for better alternative!

It's still an issue to this day, the workaround works for now but it state that the method toggleSoftInput Deprecated symbol used, consult docs for better alternative!

This should be fixed in latest core next version and will be included in 8.9.0.
Thanks for pointing out the problem!