Question

How do I make a list of items where each item has associated information in Android?

For example, I want to be able to have a list of countries and then be able to click on the country and find the population, language, w/e associated with that country.

I found this the following link with shows how to make a simple list but not how to click on an item and get the information associated with the county.

http://developer.android.com/resources/tutorials/views/hello-listview.html

How do I do this without making a database, which seems like overkill to me?

Answer 1

You make your list of Strings, and then you can make a `HashMap

like so:

class PopulationInformation {

    // add fields
    String name;
    int population;
    String language;

    //pretend there's a constructor

    // should override hashcode and equals, but right now
    // default works
}

then later you can do

Map<String,PopulationInformation> map = new HashMap<String,PopulationInformation>();
map.put("United States",new PopulationInformation("United States",320000000,"Engish"));
map.put("Canada",new PopulationInformation("Canada",30000000,"French/Engish"));

then when you select something on the list

String selected = ... // how did you select?
PopulationInformation info = map.get(selected);
String infoString = info.name + "'s population is " + info.population 
                  + ". They speak " + info.language + ".";