How do you concatenate two strings to show in one textview?

Question

I am working on a Text Adventure Game.

In the strings.xml I have two strings.

How do you add the two strings together so that a textview shows:

You are in a Garage.

Thanks in advance.

strings.xml

<string name="location_prefix">You are in a </string>
<string name="location_name">Garage</string>

MainActivity.kt

package com.example.textdisplay

import androidx.appcompat.app.AppCompatActivity
import android.os.Bundle

class MainActivity : AppCompatActivity() {

    override fun onCreate(savedInstanceState: Bundle?) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState)
        setContentView(R.layout.activity_main)
    }
}

Gradle:

buildscript {
    ext.kotlin_version = '1.3.21'
    repositories {
        google()
        jcenter()

    }
    dependencies {
        classpath 'com.android.tools.build:gradle:3.4.0'
        classpath "org.jetbrains.kotlin:kotlin-gradle-plugin:$kotlin_version"
        // NOTE: Do not place your application dependencies here; they belong
        // in the individual module build.gradle files
    }
}

allprojects {
    repositories {
        google()
        jcenter()

    }
}

task clean(type: Delete) {
    delete rootProject.buildDir
}

welcome stackoverflow. https://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve – sh.seo Apr 24 '19 at 15:32 — sh.seo, Apr 24 '19 at 15:32

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Apr 24 '19 at 15:12

2

You can concatenate Strings using the + operator:

String firstString = resources.getString(R.string.you_are)
String secondString = resources.getString(R.string.garage)

textView.setText(firstString + secondString)

before you ask, always check if someone had similar problem :)

How do I concatenate two strings in Java?

answered Apr 24 '19 at 15:12

Palejandro

2,092
5
26
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Thanks. I am very much a beginner in Android programming. What file do you place the above code in? activity_main.xml? – seddonac Apr 24 '19 at 15:41
In MainActivity.java (java class not xml) which is linked to activity_main.xml – TheAnkush Apr 24 '19 at 15:48
Where abouts in the above code as I am getting unresolved reference errors on "firststing" and "secondstring" strings. – seddonac Apr 24 '19 at 16:10

Son Truong · Answer 2 · 2019-04-25T10:25:07.327

1

Assume in activity_main.xml file, there is a TextView whose id is textView. Here are some solutions to set text for the textView.

Solution 1

class MainActivity : AppCompatActivity() {

    override fun onCreate(savedInstanceState: Bundle?) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState)
        setContentView(R.layout.activity_main)
        val textView = findViewById<TextView>(R.id.textView)
        textView.text = getString(R.string.location_prefix) + getString(R.string.location_name)
    }
}

Solution 2

class MainActivity : AppCompatActivity() {

    override fun onCreate(savedInstanceState: Bundle?) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState)
        setContentView(R.layout.activity_main)
        val textView = findViewById<TextView>(R.id.textView)
        textView.text = "${getString(R.string.location_prefix)}${getString(R.string.location_name)}"
    }
}

Solution 3

class MainActivity : AppCompatActivity() {

    override fun onCreate(savedInstanceState: Bundle?) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState)
        setContentView(R.layout.activity_main)
        val textView = findViewById<TextView>(R.id.textView)
        textView.text = String.format("%s%s", getString(R.string.location_prefix), getString(R.string.location_name))
    }
}

It's up to you to pick a solution.

Update: To keep the end space in location_prefix string, then go to string.xml file and change:

<string name="location_prefix">You are in a </string>

to

<string name="location_prefix">You are in a\u0020</string>

edited Apr 25 '19 at 10:25

answered Apr 25 '19 at 03:03

Son Truong

13,661
5
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Thanks. Thats great. I went with Solution 1. I had to add "import android.widget.TextView". However I get the error "Overrides function in AppCompatActivity". – seddonac Apr 25 '19 at 08:43
@seddonac Do you have any problem with your code now? – Son Truong Apr 25 '19 at 08:52
The code runs but with a warning as above with "overrides function in appcompatactivity". How do you get rid of the warning? – seddonac Apr 25 '19 at 10:15
Also, how can I add a space between the strings? At the moment the result of concatenating the two strings is "You are in aGarage". I need a space between "a" and "Garage". – seddonac Apr 25 '19 at 10:19
Thanks that works fine. What do you do about the warnings? The app runs fine with no build errors. – seddonac Apr 25 '19 at 11:25
About the warning, please post your gradle file. – Son Truong Apr 26 '19 at 02:28
Gradle file as above. – seddonac Apr 26 '19 at 10:02

César Muñoz · Answer 3 · 2022-05-19T14:29:57.777

If you don't want to concat them in code, you could use this plugin I've created: https://github.com/LikeTheSalad/android-stem which will generate a string with all of the strings you'd like to concatenate at build time, so for your case, you'd have to define the following in your strings:

<string name="location_prefix">You are in a ${location_name}</string>
<string name="location_name">Garage</string>

And then, when you run the tool, you'd get the following:

<!-- Auto generated during compilation -->
<string name="location_prefix">You are in a Garage</string>

Which you can then access to as with any other manually defined string within your layouts and/or code.

More details on the repo's page.

How do you concatenate two strings to show in one textview?

3 Answers3