Keeps String values separated in Android Resources

Question

As you know you can write whatever resource you need inside res/values. I made an xml file for each gui/activity I'm using. Here's an example:

strings.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<resources>
    <string name="hello">This is home!</string>
    <string name="app_name">Hattrick4Manager</string>
    <string name="oauth_button">Authorize me!</string>
    <string name="download_button">Syncronize</string>
    <string name="oauth_name">Authorization</string>
</resources>

update-ui.xml

<resources>
        <string name="inizio_download">Update Started...</string>
        <string name="fine_download">Update Completed...</string>
        <string name="update_title">Update</string>
        <string name="update_done">Done</string>
        <string name="update_inizio_club">Club...</string>
        <string name="update_inizio_arena">Arena...</string>
        <string name="update_inizio_fan">Fans...</string>
        <string name="update_inizio_matches">Matches...</string>
        <string name="update_inizio_league">League...</string>
        <string name="update_inizio_leaguefix">League Fixtures...</string>
        <string name="update_inizio_economy">Economy...</string>
        <string name="update_inizio_players">Players...</string>
</resources>

When I use this in the code I have to recall them like:

R.string.update_done

or

R.string.hello

my problem is that like this I have basically to add the prefix for every GUI I make. I would prefer doing something like:

R.string.update-ui.done

Is it possible?

No answer, just a question. What should happen if the text "Done" does exist on several activities? Do you want to put it in dozens of files? And what about the translated text? I don't like your approach. Done is Done. Give it the name done and use it in one central strings.xml. Just my 2 cents. — Harald Wilhelm
– Harald Wilhelm, Commented Aug 21, 2011 at 18:18
Well, "Done" could not have different semantics because the word is pretty clear but the way I would like to express "Done" could be different. In my case I have in my update-ui "Done" -> "Update Completed" and I could also have in the arena-ui "Done" -> "Building seats completed" — dierre
– dierre, Commented Aug 21, 2011 at 18:53
I do not understand that. The text is 'Done', right? On both activities? What's the problem? If you need to create different semantics use name="updatecompleted" with text="Done" and name="buildingseatscompleted" with text "Done". It's an old discussion what label to use. I prefer to use the label close to the text and not close to the activity/package/... — Harald Wilhelm
– Harald Wilhelm, Commented Aug 22, 2011 at 13:41
I'm sorry I was thinking about the label "Done", not the text inside it. Of course I do not want to do that for redundancy, I want to do that to keep labels separated when I'm programming. To me it's more natural to write R.string.update-ui.done instead of R.string.update_ui_done — dierre
– dierre, Commented Aug 22, 2011 at 15:54
Just to add something. If I have a label done="Done" then that would go under R.string.general-ui.done, I'm not repeating that twice. — dierre
– dierre, Commented Aug 22, 2011 at 16:00

Femi · Accepted Answer · 2011-08-21 18:46:09Z

2

You can create as many resource files as you want, but you can not perform the nested name referencing based on the filename: the Android aapt tool doesn't support arbitrary nested objects on the generated R object.

You might be able to do stuff like this in update-ui.xml:

<resources>
        <string name="update_ui_inizio_download">Update Started...</string>
        <string name="update_ui_fine_download">Update Completed...</string>
</resources>

and then use

R.string.update_ui_inizio_download

to reference the contents of the file

answered Aug 21, 2011 at 18:46

Femi

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