German unicode letters don't show up in app

Question

I have a problem with language encoding... what i try is to incorporate a random motivational string into my app which contains German unicode letters... as far as I know, Java uses Unicode-16, but the respective letters dont show up at all when I start the app. I'm using Android Studio and the app is tested on a real device.

public class Start extends ActionBarActivity {

//This is a string array containing quotes
String[] motivational = {"Unser größter Ruhm ist nicht, niemals zu fallen, sondern jedes Mal wieder aufzustehen.\nRalph Waldo Emerson"};

public int randInt() {
    Random rand = new Random();
    return rand.nextInt((motivational.length) + 1);
}

@Override
protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
    setContentView(R.layout.activity_start);

    //Takes a random quote from the list and sets it as a TextViews content
    TextView motivator = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.motivator);
    motivator.setText(motivational[randInt()]);
}

//rest of the class

Weird... it works for me. Where are the strings stored? In a text file? If so, this text file must be saved with the Unicode UTF-8 encoding, not Windows standard CodePage 1252. — Phantômaxx, Jun 19 '15 at 14:21
In the regular res/values directory, but those strings work fine even though they include German letters. The problem seems to originate in the fact that the string I use here is hardcoded in the Java file... I guess the only workaround would be by making each quote an XML reference, just think that would be a lot more work than simply including them in the code... — AdHominem, Jun 19 '15 at 14:25
Maybe the Java file itself is not saved as UTF-8. Or your workspace isn't set in the preference to use UTF-8. However, best practice wants you to set the strings into a resource file. — Phantômaxx, Jun 19 '15 at 14:27
I just wonder because it works fine with English strings... It just seems very inconvenient to do this on a large amount of strings and then putting them into an array after referencing each one of them... — AdHominem, Jun 19 '15 at 14:49
English strings don't contain special (umlauted vowels and beta) characters. — Phantômaxx, Jun 19 '15 at 14:50
And this is why I think there has to be some way to do this without using resources... already set all possible encoding options accordingly. Well, if it doesn't work, I probably need to put them all into the strings file. — AdHominem, Jun 19 '15 at 14:53
Or better, into the arrays file (or, why not? into a database table), so you can pick a random one. — Phantômaxx, Jun 19 '15 at 14:59
This sounds like a good solution... what would be the best way to access a string item inside an XML string array? Simply making a reference to the array like String[] some_array = getResources().getStringArray(R.array.your_string_array) and then using the some_array to fetch random strings? — AdHominem, Jun 19 '15 at 15:08
Yes, more or less like that. Use a Random object to get the element at a random index (0 ... elements - 1). — Phantômaxx, Jun 19 '15 at 15:10

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 19 '15 at 14:23

1

Add your text to strings.xml and then use Android's getResources.getString() method to get the text

<resources>

  <string name="motivational">Unser größter Ruhm ist nicht, niemals zu fallen, sondern jedes Mal wieder aufzustehen.\nRalph Waldo Emerson</string>

</resources>

Then in your java file, use

    String motivational = getResources().getString(R.string.motivational);
    TextView motivator = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.motivator);
    motivator.setText(motivational);

Retrieving the value from strings.xml is done using

getResources().getString(R.string.motivational)

where R.string.motivational is the unique string identifier.

Isn't this the output you are looking for?

enter image description here

answered Jun 19 '15 at 14:23

capt.swag

10,335
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If this solved your query, you should mark this answer as correct @OP – capt.swag Jun 19 '15 at 14:33
1

Well, this is a solution as stated above, but it would be rather inconvenient to put a great number of strings into the res file and then reference them in an array instead of using them directly... I know that best practise is to keep strings in the res file anyways. I just wonder if it could be possible, since it would work perfectly with English strings. – AdHominem Jun 19 '15 at 14:40

German unicode letters don't show up in app

1 Answers1