Question

I have been trying to develop an Android app of a simple sound board, which will play several long sounds, and only one at a time, not simultaneously. I have the sound part playing great. I want to assign text for each button.

I have a strings.xml set up like so:

<string name="quote01">quote01</string>
<string name="quote02">quote02</string>
<string name="quote03">quote03</string>

In my main.xml, I have my buttonIds set up like this:

    final int[] buttonIds = { R.id.button01, R.id.button02, R.id.button03, 
        R.id.button04, R.id.button05, R.id.button06, 
        R.id.button07, R.id.button08, R.id.button09, 
        R.id.button10, R.id.button11, R.id.button12, 
        R.id.button13, R.id.button14, R.id.button15, 
        R.id.button16, R.id.button16, R.id.button17, 
        R.id.button18, R.id.button19, R.id.button20, 
        R.id.button21, R.id.button22, R.id.button23, 
        R.id.button24, R.id.button25 };

I could just assign the button text like this to get it to work:

Button s01 = (Button) findViewById(R.id.button01); 
s01.setText(this.getString(R.string.quote01));
Button s02 = (Button) findViewById(R.id.button02); 
s02.setText(this.getString(R.string.quote02));
Button s03 = (Button) findViewById(R.id.button03); 
s03.setText(this.getString(R.string.quote03));

But I’d rather use a loop to avoid repetitive code. I have a non-working loop like the below:

for(int i = 0; i < buttonIds.length; i++) { 
    Button soundButton = (Button)findViewById(buttonIds[i]); 
    soundButton.setText(this.getString(R.string.buttonIds[i]);
}

But in the 3rd line above, buttonIds can’t be resolved to a field. I have tried putting brackets or parantheis around the buttonIds[1] but my syntax isn’t right. I am sure this is a super easy question, but it is illuding me. Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance!
Maytag87

Answer 1

See if this helps:

Resources res = getResources();
for(int i = 0; i < buttonIds.length; i++) { 
    Button soundButton = (Button)findViewById(buttonIds[i]); 
    soundButton.setText(res.getIdentifier("quote" + (i < 10 ? "0" + i : i), "string", getPackageName()));
}

Also your Strings set start from quote01 and the loop starts from i = 0, so you have to synchronize the two values.