Android string from input

String Resources

A string resource provides text strings for your application with optional text styling and formatting. There are three types of resources that can provide your application with strings:

String XML resource that provides a single string. String Array XML resource that provides an array of strings. Quantity Strings (Plurals) XML resource that carries different strings for pluralization.

All strings are capable of applying some styling markup and formatting arguments. For information about styling and formatting strings, see the section about Formatting and Styling.

String

A single string that can be referenced from the application or from other resource files (such as an XML layout).

Note: A string is a simple resource that is referenced using the value provided in the name attribute (not the name of the XML file). So, you can combine string resources with other simple resources in the one XML file, under one element.

file location: res/values/filename.xml
The filename is arbitrary. The element’s name will be used as the resource ID. compiled resource datatype: Resource pointer to a String . resource reference: In Java: R.string.string_name
In XML: @string/string_name syntax: elements: Required. This must be the root node.

A string, which can include styling tags. Beware that you must escape apostrophes and quotation marks. For more information about how to properly style and format your strings see Formatting and Styling, below.

name String. A name for the string. This name will be used as the resource ID. example: XML file saved at res/values/strings.xml :

This layout XML applies a string to a View:

This application code retrieves a string:

You can use either getString(int) or getText(int) to retrieve a string. getText(int) will retain any rich text styling applied to the string.

String Array

An array of strings that can be referenced from the application.

Note: A string array is a simple resource that is referenced using the value provided in the name attribute (not the name of the XML file). As such, you can combine string array resources with other simple resources in the one XML file, under one element.

file location: res/values/filename.xml
The filename is arbitrary. The element’s name will be used as the resource ID. compiled resource datatype: Resource pointer to an array of String s. resource reference: In Java: R.array.string_array_name syntax: elements: Required. This must be the root node.

Defines an array of strings. Contains one or more elements.

name String. A name for the array. This name will be used as the resource ID to reference the array. A string, which can include styling tags. The value can be a reference to another string resource. Must be a child of a element. Beware that you must escape apostrophes and quotation marks. See Formatting and Styling, below, for information about to properly style and format your strings.

example: XML file saved at res/values/strings.xml :

This application code retrieves a string array:

Quantity Strings (Plurals)

Different languages have different rules for grammatical agreement with quantity. In English, for example, the quantity 1 is a special case. We write «1 book», but for any other quantity we’d write «n books». This distinction between singular and plural is very common, but other languages make finer distinctions. The full set supported by Android is zero , one , two , few , many , and other .

The rules for deciding which case to use for a given language and quantity can be very complex, so Android provides you with methods such as getQuantityString() to select the appropriate resource for you.

Although historically called «quantity strings» (and still called that in API), quantity strings should only be used for plurals. It would be a mistake to use quantity strings to implement something like Gmail’s «Inbox» versus «Inbox (12)» when there are unread messages, for example. It might seem convenient to use quantity strings instead of an if statement, but it’s important to note that some languages (such as Chinese) don’t make these grammatical distinctions at all, so you’ll always get the other string.

The selection of which string to use is made solely based on grammatical necessity. In English, a string for zero will be ignored even if the quantity is 0, because 0 isn’t grammatically different from 2, or any other number except 1 («zero books», «one book», «two books», and so on). Conversely, in Korean only the other string will ever be used.

Don’t be misled either by the fact that, say, two sounds like it could only apply to the quantity 2: a language may require that 2, 12, 102 (and so on) are all treated like one another but differently to other quantities. Rely on your translator to know what distinctions their language actually insists upon.

It’s often possible to avoid quantity strings by using quantity-neutral formulations such as «Books: 1». This will make your life and your translators’ lives easier, if it’s a style that’s in keeping with your application.

Note: A plurals collection is a simple resource that is referenced using the value provided in the name attribute (not the name of the XML file). As such, you can combine plurals resources with other simple resources in the one XML file, under one element.

file location: res/values/filename.xml
The filename is arbitrary. The

element’s name will be used as the resource ID. resource reference: In Java: R.plurals.plural_name syntax: elements: Required. This must be the root node.

A collection of strings, of which, one string is provided depending on the amount of something. Contains one or more elements.

name String. A name for the pair of strings. This name will be used as the resource ID. A plural or singular string. The value can be a reference to another string resource. Must be a child of a

element. Beware that you must escape apostrophes and quotation marks. See Formatting and Styling, below, for information about to properly style and format your strings.

quantity Keyword. A value indicating when this string should be used. Valid values, with non-exhaustive examples in parentheses:

Value	Description
zero	When the language requires special treatment of the number 0 (as in Arabic).
one	When the language requires special treatment of numbers like one (as with the number 1 in English and most other languages; in Russian, any number ending in 1 but not ending in 11 is in this class).
two	When the language requires special treatment of numbers like two (as with 2 in Welsh, or 102 in Slovenian).
few	When the language requires special treatment of «small» numbers (as with 2, 3, and 4 in Czech; or numbers ending 2, 3, or 4 but not 12, 13, or 14 in Polish).
many	When the language requires special treatment of «large» numbers (as with numbers ending 11-99 in Maltese).
other	When the language does not require special treatment of the given quantity (as with all numbers in Chinese, or 42 in English).

example: XML file saved at res/values/strings.xml :

XML file saved at res/values-pl/strings.xml :

When using the getQuantityString() method, you need to pass the count twice if your string includes string formatting with a number. For example, for the string %d songs found , the first count parameter selects the appropriate plural string and the second count parameter is inserted into the %d placeholder. If your plural strings do not include string formatting, you don’t need to pass the third parameter to getQuantityString .

Formatting and Styling

Here are a few important things you should know about how to properly format and style your string resources.

Escaping apostrophes and quotes

If you have an apostrophe ( ‘ ) in your string, you must either escape it with a backslash ( \’ ) or enclose the string in double-quotes ( «» ). For example, here are some strings that do and don’t work:

If you have a double-quote in your string, you must escape it ( \» ). Surrounding the string with single-quotes does not work.

Formatting strings

If you need to format your strings using String.format(String, Object. ) , then you can do so by putting your format arguments in the string resource. For example, with the following resource:

In this example, the format string has two arguments: %1$s is a string and %2$d is a decimal number. You can format the string with arguments from your application like this:

Styling with HTML markup

You can add styling to your strings with HTML markup. For example:

Supported HTML elements include:

Sometimes you may want to create a styled text resource that is also used as a format string. Normally, this won’t work because the String.format(String, Object. ) method will strip all the style information from the string. The work-around to this is to write the HTML tags with escaped entities, which are then recovered with fromHtml(String) , after the formatting takes place. For example:

Store your styled text resource as an HTML-escaped string:

In this formatted string, a element is added. Notice that the opening bracket is HTML-escaped, using the notation.

Then format the string as usual, but also call fromHtml(String) to convert the HTML text into styled text:

Because the fromHtml(String) method will format all HTML entities, be sure to escape any possible HTML characters in the strings you use with the formatted text, using htmlEncode(String) . For instance, if you’ll be passing a string argument to String.format() that may contain characters such as » fromHtml(String) , the characters come out the way they were originally written. For example:

Styling with Spannables

A Spannable is a text object that you can style with typeface properties such as color and font weight. You use SpannableStringBuilder to build your text and then apply styles defined in the android.text.style package to the text.

You can use the following helper methods to set up much of the work of creating spannable text:

The following bold , italic , and color methods show you how to call the helper methods to apply styles defined in the android.text.style package. You can create similar methods to do other types of text styling.

Here’s an example of how to chain these methods to create a character sequence with different types of styling applied to individual words:

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Get User Input in Android

I have written an Android Hello World tutorial some time back. Wouldn’t it be nice if we add some simple user interaction to it. As simple as get a text input from user and display it. This tutorial will help you do that and will serve as an introduction to use of Android form widgets.

1. Create an Android Project

To create an android project,

1. Go to File menu, then select new -> project or else click new icon in tool bar.
2. Select wizard as Android->Android Application project and click Next.
3. Create new Application window will be open. Enter Application Name, Project Name and Package and click Next to continue.
4. Select launcher icon for your application and click Next.
5. Select Activity from given two types as Blank activity and Master Details flow activity.
6. Enter Activity Name, Layout name and other details to create activity.
7. Finally click Finish to complete this step.

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The Blank Activity and Master Detail Flow activity is to capture style property to design good looking app quickly.

App Layout

After completing above, the layout is created as a resource file in this path workspace/GetUserInput/res/layout/activity_frm.xml. By default it contains the following code and we need to work on graphical view of the layout to give control with some basic form widgets.

2. Add TextView for Label

Select Graphical layout view and remove default string and follow the steps below,

1. Drag and drop two Textview(Large, Medium..) from form widget in left panel (One for label of input and the another one for welcome message)
2. Select Text property in right panel and Browse to add new String. OnClick browse Resource Chooser window will open.
3. Select “New String..” and enter the String to be displayed and resource identifier and click OK.
4. Then, choose the newly added resource from ‘Resource Chooser’ and click OK.

Now following code will be created to display Textview,

3. Add EditText for User Input

Similarly drag EditText box from list of Text Fields and put it in layout next to label. This box has the input type of person name. After this, following code will be generated in the xml file.

4. Add Button for User Submission

To add button, the form widget menu has to be expanded and button can be dragged from there. Text, text color and background color of the button is changed by ‘Reference chooser’ window and property bar. After creating the button code will be as follows.

5. Button Handler

Till this step, everything is done with design view. But this step is accomplished by adding a Listener into source file(java) which will be in path workspace/GetUserInput/src/com/javapapers/android/form/FrmActivity.java This is the Activity file.

To add Listener following code has to be added,

• OnClickListener is event handler which will be invoked on clicking the Submit button.
• View class instance is responsible for the handling the event.

6. Read Input from EditBox Control

User input is read by instances of form controls. The input entered by the user is read by getText() method that is called by Editbox instance mEdit.

And then, the instance of Textview is created to show the welcome message. This will be done by the following code.

Complete Source Code and Output

Activityfrm.xml

FrmActivity.java

Output

• 
• 
• 

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Comments on «Get User Input in Android»

I am not an expert in java and thought creating android application was difficult.

Also I feared learning mobile application development as it is completely new for me. I don’t have an android mobile too.

With all these, just reading two articles from your blog made HUGE difference. Your android hello world and this article has given me great confidence. So simple easy to understand and create android application.

Already I am feeling that I know the basics of android. Thanks, Thanks.

Hi Sir,
Great tutorial in simple words,

I am new in android but I know java, In android, designing part is difficult for me Its taking too much time.
so please suggest some designing tricks.
thanks

@Deepesh Uniyal,
To align the components, instead of moving around using mouse, I prefer to use the properties padding/margin/width to fix the position. This will be easier to design.

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