Reading XML Strings from Java

Question

With something that I thought was so simple, I'm surprised to be getting such a strange error...

In my program, I have a layout with 5 buttons on it. When you press a button, it launches the phone's dialer with the number pre-loaded into it. I've had no problem with this before, but then I tried moving the phone numbers to strings in an XML file that I put in the /res/values folder called 'phone.xml'. Here's a portion of my code for the Java file:

    public void launchDialer(String number){
        String numberToDial = "tel:"+number;
        startActivity(new Intent(Intent.ACTION_DIAL, Uri.parse(numberToDial)));
    }

    public void onClick(View v) {
        switch (v.getId()) {
        case R.id.police_button1:
            launchDialer(Integer.toString(R.string.police1_phone));
            break;
        case R.id.police_button2:
            launchDialer("" + R.string.police2_phone);
            break;
        case R.id.police_button3:
            launchDialer("" + R.string.police3_phone);
            break;
        case R.id.police_button4:
            launchDialer("" + R.string.police4_phone);
            break;
        case R.id.police_button5:
            launchDialer("" + R.string.police5_phone);
            break;
        }
    }

And here's my phone.xml file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<resources>
    <string name="police1_phone">"555-555-5555"</string>
    <string name="police2_phone">1-800-555-5555</string>
    <string name="police3_phone">555-555-5555</string>
    <string name="police4_phone">555-555-5555</string>
    <string name="police5_phone">555-555-5555</string>
</resources>

As you can see in the Java file, I tried something different for police1_phone and police2_phone, but neither of them worked. You can also see I tried putting quotes around 1 of the phone numbers in the xml file, but it still didn't work. My output has always been some random 7 digit number that wasn't even close to the phone number I wanted it to print. This Java code worked:

launchDialer("555-555-5555");

But, I need it to read from an XML file. Any ideas?

"neither of them worked" doesn't give us much information. What happened? Did you get an exception? What was the value of `R.string.police2_phone` at execution time? Basically there's a bunch of diagnostics missing here... — Jon Skeet, Aug 17 '11 at 12:45
As I mentioned, I gave me a random 7-digit number in the dialer. The number it gave me was '213-096-8576', which was far from the actual number, which was '978-937-xxxx'. No matter how I worded the Java/XML file as described above, they all gave me random 7-digit numbers. — Mxyk, Aug 17 '11 at 12:49

score 8 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 17 '11 at 12:55

8

Maybe I don't understand something, but getString(R.string.police1_phone) must work.

answered Aug 17 '11 at 12:55

Michael

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I don't why any of my other attempts don't work, but this works. Thank you! – Mxyk Aug 17 '11 at 13:05
2

Because you were using the id of the resource(generated in the R class), not the value itself. – Adinia Aug 17 '11 at 13:22
Yes, @Adinia is right. Id is just an integer which you can use to load a resource. Ids are generated by the Resource Compiler so they're just random numbers for you. – Michael Aug 17 '11 at 14:08

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 17 '11 at 12:48

0

If you want they are ready to use parsers like

SAXXParser (which i allways use) http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-05-2002/jw-0517-sax.html
JAVAXML: http://www.mkyong.com/tutorials/java-xml-tutorials/
you could write your own little parser if you want.

answered Aug 17 '11 at 12:48

GrandMarquis

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The world does not need another Java XML parser – Dónal Aug 17 '11 at 12:50
Yeah but it's easy writting your own if it's only for little use like this case =) – GrandMarquis Aug 17 '11 at 12:53

score 0 · Answer 3 · edited Aug 17 '11 at 14:34

0

If you want to use R.string.xxx, then you need to put your string values in a file named strings.xml in your /res/values/ folder.

edited Aug 17 '11 at 14:34

Bitmap

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answered Aug 17 '11 at 12:59

user895758

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I would, but my strings folder is full of a bunch of other strings (this project is relatively huge; this phone portion is a very small section of the project). The reason I want it in a separate local file is because eventually I want to move on to parsing the phone numbers from an online xml file, if that makes sense. – Mxyk Aug 17 '11 at 13:02

Reading XML Strings from Java

3 Answers3