Question

I’m working on Eclipse ADT. I came across task where I need to check a number of EditText fields, so I decided I could use FOR loop to check all of them with less coding.

For instance I have:

EditText editTxt1 = (EditText) findViewById(R.id.editText1);
EditText editTxt2 = (EditText) findViewById(R.id.editText2);
EditText editTxt3 = (EditText) findViewById(R.id.editText3);
EditText editTxt4 = (EditText) findViewById(R.id.editText4);
...

and I want to check them with for loop like so:

int x;

for (x=3; x<=4; x++) {
    if (editTxt"x".getText().toString().equals("something")) do smthng...
}

Is it possible at all, or I have to go through long way coding?

Answer 1

You could do this via reflection as Quoi points out, but this is generally not a good a idea.

It would be better just to add your objects to a list or a map:

List<EditText> list = new ArrayList<EditText>();
EditText editTxt1 = (EditText) findViewById(R.id.editText1);
list.add(editTxt1);
EditText editTxt2 = (EditText) findViewById(R.id.editText2);
list.add(editTxt2);
EditText editTxt3 = (EditText) findViewById(R.id.editText3);
list.add(editTxt1);
EditText editTxt4 = (EditText) findViewById(R.id.editText4);

Now we can cycle through the list and use the index to check which edit text was being called.

int i = 0;
for (EditText e : list) {
    if(e.getText().toString().equals("something")) {
        System.out.println("editText" + i + " equals something");
        // do stuff
    }
    i++;
}

You could also use a Map to do this, this would allow you to have a name value against your objects to help give you a better reference to check what object was being called. This takes a bit more work, but might be use

Map<EditText, String> map = new HashMap<EditText, String>();
EditText editTxt1 = (EditText) findViewById(R.id.editText1);
map.put(editTxt1, "editTxt1");
EditText editTxt2 = (EditText) findViewById(R.id.editText2);
list.add(editTxt2, "editTxt2");

for (Entry<String, String> e : map.entrySet()) {
    if(e.getValue().equals("something")) {
        System.out.println(e.getKey() + " was equal to somethihng");
    }
}

PS – Never use == to compare Strings, it won’t always work!!