is there any way to inspect a variable's label in java?

Question

int foo = 0xff;

String label = getNameOfFoo(foo);

System.out.println(label);// this should print "foo";

private String getNameOfFoo(int n){
  String ret;

  ///WHAT COULD I DO HERE TO MAKE THIS A REALITY?

  return ret;
}

Before you jump on me with "Why in GOD'S name would you need this?!" I will say that my goal is get around Android's mechanism of identifying my View id's as strings (ie. "id=@+id/user_name") but having to get it back in my code as int user_name = R.id.user_name. This works fine when I know that there is a "user_name" label. But goes to crap when I don't. I'm trying to write a skinnable app that may or may not contain all sorts of things in the xml, and I need a way to inspect the ids as strings.

It would be nice, if java supported this. Just think about all the swing components, where you always have to set the "name" property... — keuleJ, May 25 '11 at 18:00

score 2 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:12

2

What you described can't be done in Java. Could you explain your real problem a bit more? I have made a skinnable Android application.

Edit: Does it help you if you can go from name to id instead? You can in that case look at this thread: How do I get the resource id of an image if I know its name?

I did however not solve it that way, and don't see a need for it.

edited May 23 '17 at 12:12

Community

1
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answered May 25 '11 at 17:52

Kaj

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score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered May 25 '11 at 18:00

1

You can use Context.getResources() for this.

int resID = getResources().getIdentifier("label_name", "drawable", "com.test.app");

And the returned resID. If it's 0 then the label is not found. Read here for more about Resources.

answered May 25 '11 at 18:00

ariefbayu

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this isn't exactly what I need... but it's close enough! thanks very much. – Yevgeny Simkin May 25 '11 at 18:11

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered May 25 '11 at 21:33

I have an app which is somewhat skinnable; the user can select one of a set of drawable resources to use as a background and I did not wish to hard-code the drawable set. What I did is name the id of each drawable using an identifiable pattern, something like "background_X", where "background_" was fixed and X could be completely free-form.

I then used reflection on the R class to determine at runtime, each of the candidate backgrounds, and presented them to the user by resource ID. When the user made their selection, I stored the reflected name in sharedPrefs rather than the resource ID... this allowed updates (which could potentially re-number each ID) to retain the user's settings.

Reflection can also be used to convert the number (foo) into a name but you need to walk through everything in R.[attr|drawable|id|etc.].* to find the match, and if you add resources to the category you will run the risk of values changing.

is there any way to inspect a variable's label in java?

3 Answers3