Develop Reference

Adding symbols through strings.xml file

I am displaying Activity's Title from strings.xml file like this
setTitle(R.string.add_contact_title);
I have following string in strings.xml
<string name="add_contact_title">Anadir Contacto</string>
but i want to display title like Añadir Contacto instead of Anadir Contacto.
is there any way to do this within the strings.xml file rather than copying and pasting the characters from another source?

You can also use unicode using the \u escape sequence like this:
<string name="add_contact_title">A\u00F1adir Contacto</string>
See here for a list of common unicode latin characters: http://unicode-table.com/en/#latin-extended-b

You can use ñ
You can find all the HTML Special Characters in this page
Special Characters in Android & HTML
just replace the code where you want to put that character. :-)

Yes you can do that. You have to start the special character with &amp
i.e for your case it will be like ñ
<string name="add_contact_title">Añadir Contacto</string>
Just check the link which will convert ASCII into Unicode
ASCII to Unicode
and Unicode Reference

use special characters in strings.xml to load in WebView

I am using WebView to display the String resource. Here is the code-
<string name="abc">à</string>
<string name="abcd">è</string>
When i load this in my webView it displays some garbage values. How to display this special characters in a WebView??

Check this list of special characters and how to encode in html.
<string name="abc">à</string>
<string name="abc">è</string>

If you enter these values into your values XML file using the graphical interface, the IDE will automatically format them for you.

Put symbol code in string tag:
<string name="welcome">Welcome !</string>
Output will be look like:
Welcome !
For more symbol code use below link :
http://www.degraeve.com/reference/specialcharacters.php
Enjoy...

How to put a “-” in string.xml file, but without escaping

I have a configuration.xml file which I hold all the (yep, you guessed it!).. configuration strings and values and stuff.
One of those values is a string which is an oauth client id, and it has a hyphen..
<string name="server_clientid">5467656-blahblahblah.apps.googleusercontent.com</string>
Now I get the warning message..
Replace "-" with an "en dash" character (–, –) ?
Ok fair enough, but if I escape with this then the client id is not valid when I fetch it within the app. I can't use & #8211; basically. How do I get around this?

You wrap your values in
<![CDATA[ ]]>
which stops the parser from parsing the contents. E.g.
<string name="server_clientid"><![CDATA[ 5467656-blahblahblah.apps.googleusercontent.com ]]></string>

You can also suppress the lint warning (which is false since the dash is not used in a typographical context):
<resources xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools">
...
<string name="server_clientid" tools:ignore="TypographyDashes">5467656-blahblahblah.apps.googleusercontent.com</string>

The "n dash" (–, –) and the "m dash" (—, —)
characters are used for ranges (n dash) and breaks (m dash). Using
these instead of plain hyphens can make text easier to read and your
application will look more polished.
Replace smaller "-" with bigger "–". You are good to go.

Android XML string 'et cetera' encode?

This gives me an error:
<string name="txt_urbeautiful">What...</string>
Replace "..." with ellipsis character (…, &&;#8230;)
So how do I encode 'et cetera...' in XML?

As the error says, you must replace ... by … :
<string name="txt_urbeautiful">What…</string>

"·"
That will represent .(dot ) in xml ,
XML does not use \ue*** notation. Character references, starting with &#, may be used, but they are mostly not needed. XML is usually used with UTF-8 character encoding, so that each character can be written as such.

How to keep the spaces at the end and/or at the beginning of a String?

I have to concatenate these two strings from my resource/value files:
<string name="Toast_Memory_GameWon_part1">you found ALL PAIRS ! on </string>
<string name="Toast_Memory_GameWon_part2"> flips !</string>
I do it this way :
String message_all_pairs_found = getString(R.string.Toast_Memory_GameWon_part1)+total_flips+getString(R.string.Toast_Memory_GameWon_part2);
Toast.makeText(this, message_all_pairs_found, 1000).show();
But the spaces at the end of the first string and at the beginning of the second string
have disappeared (when the Toast is shown) ...
What should I do ?
I guess the answer is somewhere here in this documentation link
or is it something like using &amp ; for the "&" character ??

Even if you use string formatting, sometimes you still need white spaces at the beginning or the end of your string. For these cases, neither escaping with \, nor xml:space attribute helps. You must use HTML entity   for a whitespace.
Use   for non-breakable whitespace.
Use for regular space.

I ran into the same issue. I wanted to leave a blank at the end of a resource string representing an on-screen field name.
I found a solution on this issue report : https://github.com/iBotPeaches/Apktool/issues/124
This is the same idea that Duessi suggests. Insert \u0020 directly in the XML for a blank you would like to preserve.
Example :
<string name="your_id">Score :\u0020</string>
The replacement is done at build time, therefore it will not affect the performance of your game.

This documentation suggests quoting will work:
<string name="my_str_spaces">" Before and after? "</string>

I just use the UTF code for space "\u0020" in the strings.xml file.
<string name="some_string">\u0020The name of my string.\u0020\u0020</string>
works great. (Android loves UTF codes)

This question may be old, but as of now the easiest way to do it is to add quotation marks.
For example:
<string name="Toast_Memory_GameWon_part1">"you found ALL PAIRS ! on "</string>
<string name="Toast_Memory_GameWon_part2">" flips !"</string>

There is possible to space with different widths:
<string name="space_demo">| | | ||</string>
| SPACE | THIN SPACE | HAIR SPACE | no space |
Visualisation:

use "" with the string resource value.
Example :
<string>"value with spaces"</string>
OR
use \u0020 code for spaces.

If you really want to do it the way you were doing then I think you have to tell it that the whitespace is relevant by escaping it:
<string name="Toast_Memory_GameWon_part1">you found ALL PAIRS ! on\ </string>
<string name="Toast_Memory_GameWon_part2">\ flips !</string>
However, I'd use string formatting for this. Something like the following:
<string name="Toast_Memory_GameWon">you found ALL PAIRS ! on %d flips !</string>
then
String message_all_pairs_found = String.format(getString(R.string.Toast_Memory_GameWon), total_flips);

Working well
I'm using \u0020
<string name="hi"> Hi \u0020 </string>
<string name="ten"> \u0020 out of 10 </string>
<string name="youHaveScored">\u0020 you have Scored \u0020</string>
Java file
String finalScore = getString(R.string.hi) +name+ getString(R.string.youHaveScored)+score+ getString(R.string.ten);
Toast.makeText(getApplicationContext(),finalScore,Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show();
Screenshot
here Image of Showing Working of this code

All answers here did not work for me. Instead, to add a space at the end of a string in XML i did this
<string name="more_store">more store<b> </b> </string>

An argument can be made for adding the space programmatically. Since these cases will be often used in concatenations, I decided to stop the madness and just do the old + " " +. These will make sense in most European languages, I would gather.

I've no idea about Android in particular, but this looks like the usual XML whitespace handling - leading and trailing whitespace within an element is generally considered insignificant and removed. Try xml:space:
<string name="Toast_Memory_GameWon_part1" xml:space="preserve">you found ALL PAIRS ! on </string>
<string name="Toast_Memory_GameWon_part2" xml:space="preserve"> flips !</string>

This may not actually answer the question (How to keep whitespaces in XML) but it may solve the underlying problem more gracefully.
Instead of relying only on the XML resources, concatenate using format strings.
So first remove the whitespaces
<string name="Toast_Memory_GameWon_part1">you found ALL PAIRS ! on</string>
<string name="Toast_Memory_GameWon_part2">flips !</string>
And then build your string differently:
String message_all_pairs_found =
String.format(Locale.getDefault(),
"%s %d %s",
getString(R.string.Toast_Memory_GameWon_part1),
total_flips,
getString(R.string.Toast_Memory_GameWon_part2);
Toast.makeText(this, message_all_pairs_found, 1000).show();

There is also the solution of using CDATA. Example:
<string name="test"><![CDATA[Hello world]]></string>
But in general I think \u0020 is good enough.

If you need the space for the purpose of later concatenating it with other strings, then you can use the string formatting approach of adding arguments to your string definition:
<string name="error_">Error: %s</string>
Then for format the string (eg if you have an error returned by the server, otherwise use getString(R.string.string_resource_example)):
String message = context.getString(R.string.error_, "Server error message here")
Which results in:
Error: Server error message here

It does not work with xml:space="preserve"
so I did it the quickest way =>
I simply added a +" "+ where I needed it ...
String message_all_pairs_found = getString(R.string.Toast_Memory_GameWon_part1)+" "+total_flips+" "+getString(R.string.Toast_Memory_GameWon_part2);