How to represent negative numbers in plural resources in android

Question

I was wondering if there is any easy way to format an integer based on negative, zero and positive using the plural resources mechanism in android?

My desired answer would be

if getRemaining() < -1 then "|getRemaining()| days ago"
if getRemaining() == -1 then "|getRemaining()| day ago"
if getRemaining() == 0 then "getRemaining() days remaining"
if getRemaining() == 1 then "getRemaining() day remaining"
if getRemaining() > 1 then "getRemaining() days remaining"

Right now I achieve this by following code

if (item.getRemaining() > -1) {
        holder.remainingTV.setText(res.getQuantityString(R.plurals.plural_remaining, item.getRemaining(),
            item.getRemaining()));
} else {
        holder.remainingTV.setText(res.getQuantityString(R.plurals.plural_ago, -item.getRemaining(), -item.getRemaining()));
}

My resources looks like this

<plurals name="plural_remaining">
    <item quantity="one">%d Day Remaining</item>
    <item quantity="other">%d Days Remaining</item>
</plurals>

<plurals name="plural_ago">
    <item quantity="one">%d Day Ago</item>
    <item quantity="other">%d Days Ago</item>
</plurals>

How can I achieve the aforementioned solution without having to split them based on -ve and +ve number in android?

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 19 '19 at 20:58

You can use the absolute value of the quantity into the getQuantityString like this (in Kotlin) or Math.abs (in Java) :

getQuantityString(
   R.plurals.a_plural,
   quantityValue.absoluteValue,
   quantityValue
)

Its will handle : -1, 0, 1 and the others values

How to represent negative numbers in plural resources in android

1 Answers1