How to edit multiline strings in Android strings.xml file? - android

I have several cases where my string in strings.xml is quite long and has multiple lines done with \n.
Editing however is quite annoying since it is a long line in Eclipse.
Is there a better way to edit this so it looks like it will be presented later in the textview, ie the line breaks as line breaks and the text in multiline edit mode?


Two possibilities:
1. Use the Source, Luke
XML allows literal newline characters in strings:
<string name="breakfast">eggs
and
spam</string>
You just have to edit the XML code instead of using the nifty Eclipse GUI
2. Use actual text files
Everything inside the assets directory is available as a input stream from the application code.
You can access those file input streams of assets with AssetManager.open(), a AssetManager instance with Resources.getAssets(), and… you know what, here’s the Java-typical enormously verbose code for such a simple task:
View view;
//before calling the following, get your main
//View from somewhere and assign it to "view"
String getAsset(String fileName) throws IOException {
AssetManager am = view.getContext().getResources().getAssets();
InputStream is = am.open(fileName, AssetManager.ACCESS_BUFFER);
return new Scanner(is).useDelimiter("\\Z").next();
}
the use of Scanner is obviously a shortcut m(


Sure, you could put newlines into the XML, but that won't give you line breaks. In strings.xml, as in all XML files, Newlines in string content are converted to spaces. Therefore, the declaration
<string name="breakfast">eggs
and
spam</string>
will be rendered as
eggs and spam
in a TextView. Fortunately, there's a simple way to have newlines in the source and in the output - use \n for your intended output newlines, and escape the real newlines in the source. The above declaration becomes
<string name="breakfast">eggs\n
and\n
spam</string>
which is rendered as
eggs
and
spam


For anyone looking for a working solution that allows the XML String content to have multiple lines for maintainability and render those multiple lines in TextView outputs, simply put a \n at the beginning of the new line... not at the end of the previous line. As already mentioned, one or more new lines in the XML resource content is converted to one single empty space. Leading, trailing and multiple empty spaces are ignored. The idea is to put that empty space at the end of the previous line and put the \n at the beginning of the next line of content. Here is an XML String example:
<string name="myString">
This is a sentence on line one.
\nThis is a sentence on line two.
\nThis is a partial sentence on line three of the XML
that will be continued on line four of the XML but will be rendered completely on line three of the TextView.
\n\nThis is a sentence on line five that skips an extra line.
</string>
This is rendered in the Text View as:
This is a sentence on line one.
This is a sentence on line two.
This is a partial sentence on line three of the XML that will be continued on line four of the XML but will be rendered completely on line three of the TextView.
This is a sentence on line five that skips an extra line.


You may easily use "" and write any word even from other languages with out error:
<string name="Hello">"Hello
world!
سلام
دنیا!"
</string>

Related

How to format (write) XML strings in Eclipse in multiple rows?

I can't find if there is a way to write very long strings in XML in multiple lines without affecting string behavior in the code.
I have FAQ section and Answers to some questions are EG 3-4 sentences, some 400 characters long. So for each "Enter" ("Return") that I've pressed in my Strings file, I get new paragraph when displaying this in the app.
I've read here that concatenation is not working, but I do not really need it, I need to escape new paragraph that occurs when enter is pressed.

Also, you can use \n:
<string name="about_message">
Line1\nLine2\nLine3
</string>

TextView carriage return not working

I am reading a string from an xml file stored on the sdcard that has some carriage returns stored with the "\n" escape sequence. Such as
<string mystring="Line1\nLine2">
But when I display the text in the emulator, the \n is showing up instead of making a newline. I am not doing anything unusual with the text--just reading it with a SAXParser and then adding it to a textview. Is there a setting I need to check to make sure newlines are rendered correctly? Do I need to store the carriage returns differently in the xml file?
I have also tried \r\n and that doesn't work either.
When I debug, I can see that an extra \ is placed in front of the existing \
I see that in my SAX startElement method, the line
String s = atts.getValue("mystring");
assigns "Line1\nLine2" to s, so the problem is with the SAXParser.

works very well in the middle of a quoted textview. I'd like to add that in Eclipses' graphic viewer it puts in an extra space (like it is double spaced). When it is compiled however and you run it on the emulator or a device, you only have the carriage return. So, trust MrGibbage and you'll save yourself some time.

\n is actually a line feed character, while carriage return is \r. Try using both together, e.g. \r\n.
More info about newline.
For handling the whitespace with SAX take a look at ignorableWhitespace(..) method.

Well, I figured out an answer. I had to store the newlines in my xml file ampersand-hash-x-A-semicolon

Use a
where you need the carraige return.

What is character 0x1f?

I've just imported a chunk of text into a string element for a book app and I'm getting this error : An invalid XML character (Unicode:0x1f) was found in the element content of this document.
I looked it up here http://lwp.interglacial.com/appf_01.htm and the description says US (removing underlining doesnt seem to work).
What is this character so I can remove it if possible.
I'm very new to android so simple answers please :)

0x1f is a Unit Separator, an archaic way to separate fields in a text (Like , or Tab in CSV).
It is indeed not a valid text character in XML 1.0 (but allowed in XML 1.1). In a UTF-8 input string, you can also safely replace the byte 0x1f with 0x09(Tab) to work around the problem. Alternatively, declare the document as XML 1.1 and use an XML 1.1 parser.

US means "Unit separator". This is an invisible character, so you should open your text file with some text editor that can show the invisible characters and remove them. I think that probably Notepad++ will give you this functionality:
http://notepad-plus-plus.org/

Use Nodepad++ you will find the "Unit separator".
Like the picture:

How to add a line break in an Android TextView?

I am trying to add a line break in the TextView.
I tried suggested \n but that does nothing. Here is how I set my texts.
TextView txtSubTitle = (TextView)findViewById(r.id.txtSubTitle);
txtSubTitle.setText(Html.fromHtml(getResources().getString(R.string.sample_string)));
This is my String: <string name="sample_string">some test line 1 \n some test line 2</string>
It should show like so:
some test line 1
some test line 2
But it shows like so: some test line 1 some test line 2.
Am I missing something?

\n works for me, like this:
<TextView android:text="First line\nNext line"

ok figured it out:
<string name="sample_string"><![CDATA[some test line 1 <br />some test line 2]]></string>
so wrap in CDATA is necessary and breaks added inside as html tags

Android version 1.6 does not recognize \r\n.
Instead, use: System.getProperty("line.separator")
String s = "Line 1"
+ System.getProperty("line.separator")
+ "Line 2"
+ System.getProperty("line.separator");

Linebreaks (\n) only work if you put your string resource value in quotes like this:
<string name="sample_string">"some test line 1 \n some test line 2"</string>
It won't do linebreaks if you put it without quotes like this:
<string name="sample_string">some test line 1 \n some test line 2</string>
yes, it's that easy.

Tried all the above, did some research of my own resulting in the following solution for rendering linefeed escape chars:
string = string.replace("\\\n", System.getProperty("line.separator"));
Using the replace method you need to filter escaped linefeeds (e.g. '\\n')
Only then each instance of line feed '\n' escape chars gets rendered into the actual linefeed
For this example I used a Google Apps Scripting noSQL database (ScriptDb) with JSON formatted data.
Cheers :D

There are two ways around this.
If you use your string as a raw string, you need to use the newline
character. If you use it as html, e.g. by parsing it with Html.fromString,
the second variant is better.
1) Newline character \n
<string name="sample">This\nis a sample</string>
2) Html newline tag <br> or <br />
<string name="sample">This<br>is a sample</string>

This worked for me
android:text="First \n Second"

This worked for me, maybe someone will find out this helpful:
TextView textField = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.textview1);
textField.setText("First line of text" + System.getProperty("line.separator") + "Linija 2");

If you're using XML to declare your TextView use android:singleLine = "false" or in Java, use txtSubTitle.setSingleLine(false);

Used Android Studio 0.8.9. The only way worked for me is using \n.
Neither wrapping with CDATA nor <br> or <br /> worked.

I use the following:
YOUR_TEXTVIEW.setText("Got some text \n another line");

very easy : use "\n"
String aString1 = "abcd";
String aString2 = "1234";
mSomeTextView.setText(aString1 + "\n" + aString2);
\n corresponds to ASCII char 0xA, which is 'LF' or line feed
\r corresponds to ASCII char 0xD, which is 'CR' or carriage return
this dates back from the very first typewriters, where you could choose to do only a line feed (and type just a line lower), or a line feed + carriage return (which also moves to the beginning of a line)
on Android / java the \n corresponds to a carriage return + line feed, as you would otherwise just 'overwrite' the same line

As I know in the previous version of android studio uses separate lines " \n " code. But new one (4.1.2) uses "<br/" to separate lines. For example -
Old one:
<string name="string_name">Sample text 1 \n Sample text 2 </string>
New one:
<string name="string_name">Sample text 1 <br/> Sample text 2 </string>

Also you can add "<br/>" instead of \n.
It's HTML escaped code for <br/>
And then you can add text to TexView:
articleTextView.setText(Html.fromHtml(textForTextView));

Try to double-check your localizations.
Possible, you trying to edit one file (localization), but actually program using another, just like in my case. The default system language is russian, while I trying to edit english localization.
In my case, working solution is to use "\n" as line separator:
<string name="string_one">line one.
\nline two;
\nline three.</string>

You could also use the String-Editor of Android Studio, it automatically generates line brakes and stuff like that...

As Html.fromHtml deprecated I simply I used this code to get String2 in next line.
textView.setText(fromHtml("String1 <br/> String2"));
.
#SuppressWarnings("deprecation")
public static Spanned fromHtml(String html){
Spanned result;
if (android.os.Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= android.os.Build.VERSION_CODES.N) {
result = Html.fromHtml(html,Html.FROM_HTML_MODE_LEGACY);
} else {
result = Html.fromHtml(html);
}
return result;
}

The most easy way to do it is to go to values/strings (in your resource folder)
Declare a string there:
<string name="example_string">Line 1\Line2\Line n</string>
And in your specific xml file just call the string like
<TextView
android:id="#+id/textView"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:text="#string/example_string" />

I found another method:
Is necessary to add the "android:maxWidth="40dp"" attribute.
Of course, it may not work perfectly, but it gives a line break.

\n was not working for me. I was able to fix the issue by changing the xml to text and building the textview text property like below.
android:text="Line 1
Line 2
Line 3
DoubleSpace"
Hopefully This helps those who have said that \n did not work for them.

I'm reading my text from a file, so I took a slightly different approach, since adding \n to the file resulted in \n appearing in the text.
final TextView textView = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.warm_up_view);
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
Scanner scanner = new Scanner(getResources().openRawResource(R.raw.warm_up_file));
while (scanner.hasNextLine()) {
sb.append(scanner.nextLine());
sb.append("\n");
}
textView.setText(sb.toString());

In my case, I solved this problem by adding the following:
android:inputType="textMultiLine"

Maybe you are able to put the lf into the text, but it doesn't display? Make sure you have enough height for the control. For example:
Correct:
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
May be wrong:
android:layout_height="10dp"

I feel like a more complete answer is needed to describe how this works more thoroughly.
Firstly, if you need advanced formatting, check the manual on how to use HTML in string resources.
Then you can use <br/>, etc. However, this requires setting the text using code.
If it's just plain text, there are many ways to escape a newline character (LF) in static string resources.
Enclosing the string in double quotes
The cleanest way is to enclose the string in double quotes.
This will make it so whitespace is interpreted exactly as it appears, not collapsed.
Then you can simply use newline normally in this method (don't use indentation).
<string name="str1">"Line 1.
Line 2.
Line 3."</string>
Note that some characters require special escaping in this mode (such as \").
The escape sequences below also work in quoted mode.
When using a single-line in XML to represent multi-line strings
The most elegant way to escape the newline in XML is with its code point (10 or 0xA in hex) by using its XML/HTML entity
or
. This is the XML way to escape any character.
However, this seems to work only in quoted mode.
Another method is to simply use \n, though it negatively affects legibility, in my opinion (since it's not a special escape sequence in XML, Android Studio doesn't highlight it).
<string name="str1">"Line 1.
Line 2.
Line 3."</string>
<string name="str1">"Line 1.\nLine 2.\nLine 3."</string>
<string name="str1">Line 1.\nLine 2.\nLine 3.</string>
Do not include a newline or any whitespace after any of these escape sequences, since that will be interpreted as extra space.

I would recommend querying the line.separator property, and using that whenever you want to add a line break.
Here is some sample code:
TextView calloutContent = new TextView(getApplicationContext());
calloutContent.setTextColor(Color.BLACK);
calloutContent.setSingleLine(false);
calloutContent.setLines(2);
calloutContent.setText(" line 1" + System.getProperty ("line.separator")+" line2" );

New Line character \n not displaying properly in textView Android

I know that if you do something like
myTextView.setText("This is on first line \n This is on second line");
Then it will display properly like this:
This is on first line
This is on second line
When I store that string in a database and then set it to the view it displays as such:
This is on first line \n This is on second line
Here is the line of code I use to extract the string from the database:
factView.setText(factsCursor.getString(MyDBAdapter.FACT_COLUMN));
I simply populate the database from a text file where each line is a new entry into the table so a line would look like this "This is on first line \n This is on second line" and it is stored as text.
Is there a reason that it isn't displaying the \n characters properly? It must be something to do with the string being in the database. Any suggestions?

I found this question Austyn Mahoney's answer is correct but here's a little help:
private String unescape(String description) {
return description.replaceAll("\\\\n", "\\\n");
}
description being the string coming out of your SQLite DB

As Falmarri said in his comment, your string is being escaped when it is put into the database. You could try and unescape the string by calling String s = unescape(stringFromDatabase) before you place it in your TextView.
As a side note, make sure you are using DatabaseUtils.sqlEscapeString() on any kind of data that is from the user or an unknown changeable source when inserting data into the database. This will protect you from errors and SQL Injection.

Try \\n instead of \n. If it throws an exception than use newline keyword in place of \n....newline is one character, ascii 10; it's often entered in a string literal...and will serve your purpose....:)

"This is on first line"||x'0A'||"This is on second line"
The || concatenates strings and the x'0A' is an unescaped newline.
If you're inserting records you'll have to replace every newline with "||x'0A'||" (If your string is double quoted). This may seem clumsy compared to the other asnswers. However if your lines are in separate columns this also works in a select:
SELECT firstline||x'0A'||secondline FROM wherever;
I found this while having the same problem you are: http://www.mail-archive.com/sqlite-users#sqlite.org/msg43557.html

A text area can be in multi line or single line mode. When it is in single line mode newline characters '\n' will be treated as spaces. When in doubt, to switch multi line mode on you can use the following code:
setInputType(getInputType() | InputType.TYPE_TEXT_FLAG_MULTI_LINE);
I had the problem that the same code did not work on honeycomb and on froyo, which seem to have different defaults. I am now also excluding the flag when I want to force a field to be single lined.
From the Android doc:
public static final int TYPE_TEXT_FLAG_MULTI_LINE Added in API level 3
Flag for TYPE_CLASS_TEXT: multiple lines of text can be entered into
the field. If this flag is not set, the text field will be
constrained to a single line. Constant Value: 131072 (0x00020000)
http://developer.android.com/reference/android/text/InputType.html#TYPE_TEXT_FLAG_MULTI_LINE
You have to set the flag before you populate the field.

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