Question

I am trying to work out if I can use a resource file, while developing my android app, to hold a list of numbers using a string value as a key. For example

numbers(“UK”)= 999
numbers(“US”) = 911

As I said, this would ideally be in resource file rather than a Java class as it is more maintainable

Answer 1

You want to define a dictionary in resources. There’s no way to do that directly. You could however define the keys and values as arrays, then build the dictionary.

In res/values/arrays.xml, have something like,

<string-array name="emergency_keys">
    <item>UK</item>
    <item>US</item>
            ....
</string-array>
<integer-array name="emergency_values">
    <item>999</item>
    <item>911</item>
            ...
</integer-array>

Then in your code you have this utility method,

Map<String,Integer> getDict(int keyId, int valId) {
  String[] keys = getResources().getStringArray(keyId);
  int[] values = getResources().getIntArray(valid); 

  Map<String,Integer> dict = new HashMap<String,Integer>();
  for (int i = 0, l = keys.length; i < l; i++) {
    dict.put(keys[i], vals[i]);
  }

  return dict;
}

When you need the dictionary in your code, do this,

Map<String,Integer> emergencyNumbers = getDict(R.array.emergency_keys, R.array.emergency_values);