Android Item Resource has a Name and Type

Here’s a handy trick to use instead of constants in your code.  It uses the Item resource tag to define application specific constants which are located in a resource XML file.

For example, given the following XML located in a file in the res/values directory

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<resources>
 <item name="host" type="setting">10.0.2.2</item>
 <item name="port" type="setting">3000</item>
</resources>

I can now use the following Java syntax within an Android Activity:

String host = getString( R.setting.host );
int port    = getResources().getInteger( R.setting.port );

This gives me a scheme to have a common place with ‘types’ to define constants. I’ve just barely started using it, but it seems like a nice clean way of handling these ‘magic’ values without using static final variables.