(Android) Changing text color in strings.xml

Question

First, depending on the user's actions, I want to retrieve a certain strings from my strings.xml resource file:

String option1 = context.getString(R.string.string_one)
String option2 = context.getString(R.string.string_two)
String option3 = context.getString(R.string.string_three)

Then, I pass these strings as String[] options to a custom adapter for a ListView where I set the text of a TextView

    public ChoicesAdapter(Context context, String[] options) {
         super(context, R.layout.choice_option_layout_2,choices);
    }



 @Override
    public View getView(int position, View convertView, ViewGroup parent) {
        LayoutInflater MyInflater = LayoutInflater.from(getContext());
        View MyView = MyInflater.inflate(R.layout.option_list_layout, parent, false);

        String option = getItem(position);
        TextView textView = (TextView) MyView.findViewById(R.id.textView);

        textView.setText(Html.fromHtml(option));

        return MyView;
    }

I want different strings in my strings.xml file to have different colors or different formatting. For example, here is one of my strings:

 <string name ="exit"><![CDATA[<i>exit</i>]]></string>

However, when this string is displayed on the screen, it shows as: "exit"

So, I'm guessing somewhere in my method I am losing the string.xml resource's formatting. How can I get it so instead of showing "exit", it will show "exit" on the screen?

I am thinking my problem is where i use .getString(). Is this somehow ignoring the formatting that I added to it in the .xml file?

Is this still an issue? please view the answer below if so, TextView's can use Spannable for formatting — kandroidj
– kandroidj, Commented Jul 30, 2015 at 16:51

WOUNDEDStevenJones · Accepted Answer · 2015-07-17 16:41:49Z

Check out http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/resources/string-resource.html#FormattingAndStyling - their example is:

<string name="welcome">Welcome to <b>Android</b>!</string>

It says you can use text for bold text, text for italic text, and text for underlined text.

The important part of this is, "Normally, this won't work because the String.format(String, Object...)method will strip all the style information from the string. The work-around to this is to write the HTML tags with escaped entities, which are then recovered with fromHtml(String), after the formatting takes place."

They say to "store your styled text resource as an HTML-escaped string" like

 <string name="exit">&lt;i>exit&lt;/i></string>

and then use:

Resources res = getResources();
String text = String.format(res.getString(R.string.exit));
CharSequence styledText = Html.fromHtml(text);

to get the formatted text correctly.

kandroidj · Accepted Answer · 2015-07-17 16:41:00Z

2

Did you just try to read your String into Spannable?

// Use a spannable to keep formatting
Spannable mySpannable = Html.fromHtml(context.getString(R.string.string_one));
textView.setText(mySpannable);

answered Jul 17, 2015 at 16:41

kandroidj

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