Question

I use XML output in my app. So basically the main activity just tells the android to show the XML layout of main.

But what if I have in the activity code defined integer variable and I want this integer variable also be shown on the display?

How do I PUSH the integer variable to the XML??? From main XML reference to other strings in XML is easy – @string/app_name … but how do I use the integer variable from the activity?

Answer 1

Presumably you’re showing some text in a TextView.

You can display text either from a string resource (defined in XML and referred to as R.string.*, as you mention) or from a String at runtime.

You can’t change the XML resources at runtime; you use them for fixed values like labels or other UI text. So there’s no way to “push” a value to XML.

But you can happily do something like this at runtime, dynamically updating your UI:

int userAge = calculateUsersAge();
TextView age = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.age_field);
age.setText(userAge +" years old");

Or better, ensuring there are no hardcoded values in the code:

age.setText(getString(R.string.years_old, userAge));

Where years_old is the text “%d years old” in your res/values/strings.xml and “%d Jahre alt” in your res/values-de/strings.xml, and so on.