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Once we create some string resources in strings.xml, we need to then access them in our app using the Context.
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Let's go back to MainActivity.java,
and now to get the string value
0:00
from the strings.xml file,
we need to reference it through its name.
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Just like when we reference elements
in the layout through their IDs.
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Let's take a brief look at
the Android documentation.
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This section talks about how to access
string and other types of resources.
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If we scroll down a little bit
we can see an example of how to
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access a string in code with
the ID r.string.hello, or
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in XML with @string/ and
then the string name that we provided.
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This next section is called
accessing resources in code.
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This has an example,
with a nice little shortcut, but
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I wanna highlight this line here.
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You can also retrieve individual
resources using methods in Resources,
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which you can get an instance
of with getResources.
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So there is a special
Resources object we can use
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to access all the resources we create and
wrap up in our app, very cool.
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Let's use this resources object.
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And also use the shortcut
shown in this example.
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The resource's object is available
to us anywhere in our app,
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if we have access to the current context.
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Do you remember what the context
is inside of an activity?
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How do we access the current context here?
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That's right, all activities
are a subclass of the context class.
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So we can always access the context
directly in an activity.
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Let's spell this out with the variables,
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although we could put this all
on one line if we'd prefer.
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You can clean your code up after
this explanation if you'd like.
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So here in our startStory method,
before we try and use the key name,
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let's add a new Resources
variable named resources, and
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we can set it with a method
from the context class.
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Thanks to inheritance that means we
can just type it here getResources and
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sure enough it returns
a resources variable.
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Next let's add a string variable to
hold our key name String key = and
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now we can set this from
the Resources instance resources..
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And then an auto-complete,
let's see there's a getString method and
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it takes an id as a parameter.
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So here we can type R., and
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then notice these are all the different
types of resources we can provide.
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We want a string,
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and then from there we can select
the new name that we enter key_name.
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Lastly, before we forget,
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we want to change the hard coded key
here to use our new key variable.
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Now let's do the same thing
in StoryActivity.java.
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Only this time we'll use a shortcut
available from the activity class.
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So once again we can delete
the hard coded key name here,
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and we can call directly getString() and
pass in an ID R.string.key_name.
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So this method is an additional activity
method that goes through the given
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resources object and
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lets us access resources using
the ID just like we did before.
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All right, let's run this and
make sure that it works.
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Okay so if we add our name, start our
adventure, we should see it in the log.
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I'll bring it up here.
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And here we go,
here's the name that we just entered.
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Okay, there's one more thing I wanna
do before we wrap up this video.
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So remember in our layouts before,
we had a couple of warnings that we were
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ignoring, that's because I wanted to
use string resources to fix them.
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So here,
if we go back to the main layout, and
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it's easier to see here in the XML view.
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So first one is the content description.
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And we can now use a quick fix to pull
this hard coded string directly into
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a string resource.
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If we hit alt + Enter to do a quick
fix anywhere in the hard coded string
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we can select Extract string resource.
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It does everything for
us pretty much automatically.
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It gives us a default resource name,
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it gives us the value directly
from the hard coded string and
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we're gonna leave the source set alone as
main and the file name as strings.xml.
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And you can see it's going to
create it in the values directory,
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just like we already have it, so click OK.
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It replaces it here.
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This is how we access it in XML,
@string/ and then the string name.
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And then if we go to strings.xml,
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we can see we have a new
extracted string resource, cool.
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So as a challenge for you, go through
the rest of your layout files, and
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extract all the other warnings
into new string resources.
3:56
Okay so
we're off to a great start with this app.
4:00
We've introduced multiple activities, and
4:02
now we know how to pass data from
one to another using an intent.
4:04
Next step we will build the story part of
our app following a really common software
4:07
design pattern, known as
Model View Presenter or MVP for short.
4:11
It's pretty awesome, so
make sure you're ready for
4:15
the fun before going on the next section.
4:18
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