How can I discriminate the selected item of a Spinner by its text when using multilanguage items in Android?

Question

I am trying to discriminate the selected item of a Spinner by its (multilanguage) text.

Here is my default strings.xml content:

<string-array name="spinner_items">
    <item>length</item>
    <item>weight</item>
    <item>temperature</item>
</string-array>

And this is another strings.xml (Italian language) content:

<string-array name="spinner_items">
    <item>lunghezza</item>
    <item>peso</item>
    <item>temperatura</item>
</string-array>

I set up my Spinner items in this way:

val items = resources.getStringArray(R.array.spinner_items)
spinner.adapter = ArrayAdapter(requireContext(), android.R.layout.simple_spinner_item, items)

And then I add the item selected listener:

spinner.onItemSelectedListener = object : AdapterView.OnItemSelectedListener {

    override fun onItemSelected(parent: AdapterView<*>, view: View, position: Int, id: Long) {
        when(spinner.getItemAtPosition(position).toString()) {
            "length" -> actionLength()
            "lunghezza" -> actionLength()
            "weight" -> actionWeight()
            "peso" -> actionWeight()
            "temperature" -> actionTemperature()
            "temperatura" -> actionTemperature()
        }
    }

    override fun onNothingSelected(parent: AdapterView<*>) {}
}

Everything works fine but the problem is that everytime I add a new language locale, I have to remember to add the specific string translation inside the when block. Is there a more "dynamic" way to do this?

Answer 1

I had the same problem in the past and here is how I solved it. Edit your strings.xml files by adding a string resource name for each items in your array, for example:

Default strings.xml

<string name="length">length</string>
<string name="weight">weight</string>
<string name="temperature">temperature</string>

<string-array name="spinner_items">
    <item>@string/length</item>
    <item>@string/weight</item>
    <item>@string/temperature</item>
</string-array>

Italian strings.xml

<string name="length">lunghezza</string>
<string name="weight">peso</string>
<string name="temperature">temperatura</string>

<string-array name="spinner_items">
    <item>@string/length</item>
    <item>@string/weight</item>
    <item>@string/temperature</item>
</string-array>

So in your code, you'll have:

when(spinner.getItemAtPosition(position).toString()) {
    getString(R.string.length) -> actionLength()
    getString(R.string.weight) -> actionWeight()
    getString(R.string.temperature) -> actionTemperature()
}

I hope I was helpful!