How Can I Access Android Resources by Name Instead of ID?

Accessing Resources by Name in Android

When developing Android applications, it's often necessary to access resources such as strings, drawables, and layouts. While it's common to use the resource's integer ID, there may be situations where accessing it by its name is preferred.

Method for Obtaining Resource ID by Name

The Android framework provides a method for retrieving a resource's ID given its name:

int resourceId = this.getResources()
    .getIdentifier("nameOfResource", "type", this.getPackageName())

Where:

• this represents an Activity or Context object.
• nameOfResource is the resource's name as defined in the respective resource file (e.g., strings.xml for strings).
• type is the resource type, such as drawable for images or string for text.
• getPackageName() retrieves the package name of your application.

Example Usage

To access a string resource named "app_name" in the strings.xml file:

int stringId = this.getResources()
    .getIdentifier("app_name", "string", this.getPackageName());
String appName = this.getString(stringId);

Similarly, to access a drawable resource named "image.png" in the drawable folder:

int drawableId = this.getResources()
    .getIdentifier("image", "drawable", this.getPackageName());
Drawable drawable = this.getDrawable(drawableId);

Performance Considerations

It's important to note that accessing resources by name using getIdentifier() is relatively slow compared to using the integer ID directly. Therefore, it's recommended to only use this method when necessary, such as when dynamic resource loading is required.

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