Using placeholders with textView

[Greum]

I'm trying to get mybrain around using placeholders with a textView. Instead of simply displaying "VAT" I want to show "VAT at 20%" (or whatever the rate is).

I currently have in my strings.xml

<string name="vat_text">VAT</string>

and in my Java

textView16.setText(R.string.vat_text);

I have changed the entry in strings.xml

<string name="vat_text">VAT at %d</string>

and tried in my Java

textView16.setText(getString(R.string.vat_text, vatPc));

but this gives a runtime error (which I couldn't catch as there were dozens of other errors afterwards.

 

[23tony]

That doesn't quite seem valid based on the documentation: https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/resources/string-resource

I did a little digging and found this: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/12627457/format-statement-in-a-string-resource-file - maybe that can help?

It looks like you need to use a format like %1$d rather than %d. Hopefully that will work.

 

[Greum]

Thanks. I hadn't found that post on SO. I'll have a play with those.

It helps to pay attention to variable types!

<string name="vat_text">VAT at %1$.2f pc</string>

does the job, although I can't find how to include a % sign. It's not listed as one of the characters that needs to be escaped but bombs the script either way.

Edit. A bit more research and I discovered \%% did the job.