Question

I have an enumeration where I need to display the values as localized strings. My current approach has been this:

public enum MyEnum {
    VALUE1(R.string.VALUE1),
    VALUE2(R.string.VALUE2),
    .
    .
    VALUE10(R.string.VALUE10);

    private int mResId = -1;

    private MuEnum(int resId) {
        mResId = resId;
    }

    public String toLocalizedString(Resources r) {
        if (-1 != mResId) return (r.getString(mResId));
        return (this.toString());
    }
}

Is there any easier way to to do this? I’d love it if I could somehow lookup the resource based on the enumeration value name (i.e ‘VALUE1’).

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<resources>
    <string name="VALUE1"/>My string</string>
    <string name="VALUE2"/>My string 2</string>
    .
    .
    <string name="VALUE10"/>My string 3</string>
</resources>

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

EDIT: Just for future reference, this is the solution that worked best for me:

public enum MyEnum {
    VALUE1, 
    VALUE2, 
    . 
    . 
    VALUE10; 

    /**
     * Returns a localized label used to represent this enumeration value.  If no label
     * has been defined, then this defaults to the result of {@link Enum#name()}.  
     * 
     * <p>The name of the string resource for the label must match the name of the enumeration
     * value.  For example, for enum value 'ENUM1' the resource would be defined as 'R.string.ENUM1'.
     * 
     * @param context   the context that the string resource of the label is in.
     * @return      a localized label for the enum value or the result of name()
     */
    public String getLabel(Context context) {
        Resources res = context.getResources();
        int resId = res.getIdentifier(this.name(), "string", context.getPackageName());
        if (0 != resId) {
            return (res.getString(resId));
        }
        return (name());
    }
}

Answer 1

You can certainly look up a resource by its name using Resources.getIdentifier(). For instance, with the string resources you posted as an example, you can do this from an activity:

Resources res = getResources();
MyEnum e = MyEnum.VALUE1;
String localized = res.getString(res.getIdentifier(e.name(), "string", getPackageName()));

From a View, you’d have to change the last argument to getContext().getPackageName()