Question

I have an XML resource file for an Android App that contains many string arrays, each named word#, where # is a number (currently from 0-100). i.e. word0, word1, etc.

I am using Random to choose a random number, and then a switch statement to select the correct array based on the number. So, if random.nextInt returns 4, I wand to return R.array.word4

Here is my code:

private String[] getWordArray(int i) { //i is a random number

        Resources res = getResources();
        String[] x = new String[8];

        switch(i){
        case 0: x = res.getStringArray(R.array.word0); break;
        case 1: x = res.getStringArray(R.array.word1); break;
        case 2: x = res.getStringArray(R.array.word2); break;
        case 3: x = res.getStringArray(R.array.word3); break;
//and so on
}

I know this is horrendously repetitive, especially because I eventually want to have 1000 arrays. What can I do to make this better?

I must the XML resource storage method.

Answer 1

You can get resource id by its name:

final Resources resources = getResources();
final String name = "word" + i;
final int id = resources.getIdentifier(name, "array", getPackageName());
final String[] array = resources.getStringArray(id);