Access strings.xml values in library

Question

I've written a networking library for my android app, and I want to be able to access a url value that I defined in my strings.xml file from that library. The problem is that the library isn't an Activity or Fragment or anything like that, and so it doesn't have access to the normal Context or other things that being a first-class Android citizen gets you. Is there any way for me to access the value without having a Context (or without having one passed in during function calls from Activities and Fragments)?

I know that I can access the R class easily, but all that gives me is byte offsets - I need the getString() method to turn that offset into something meaningful unless I want to do lots of fun romping in raw-bytes land (which I'd like to avoid).

Thanks!

Answer 1

No, there isn't, and manually parsing low level data is definitely not the solution here. The whole point of resources is to be retrieved according to the Context qualification (hence the powerful qualifiers system), and that's why I made that suggestion in the other question you just asked. :-)

Unless you provide a way (method parameter, for example), you won't be able to retrieve the resource. It comes to a point where you should rethink the architecture of your library: why do you need the URI to be qualified? If you're on a library, the client app will have its own Context, and can safely supply one to your library, thus retrieving the resource. If that's not the point (I.e., access the URI in code), then you shouldn't be using a resource, but a final static variable instead, like I suggested.

There are a few instances where you can benefit from the qualifiers capability when dealing with URIs, but, as I said, if you're using on your library only, you probably want a variable defined in code instead.