How and when to use a 'Extract String Resource"?

Issue

I know this may be a dumb question to some, but what exactly does 'Extract String Resource" in Android Studio do? I know that it updates the strings.xml file, but why do we extract it? What is the point of it? And I'm not sure when to use it? Thank you for your help and time! (I'm new to Android Studio).

Solution

why do we extract it?

To take a literal string, hard-coded somewhere, and replace it with a string resource and a reference to that string resource. So, you turn something like:

btnSomething.setText("Foo");

with:

btnSomething.setText(R.string.foo);

and a <string> resource named foo with a default value of Foo.

Principally, you use string resources for translations. So, res/values/strings.xml might hold US English strings, but res/values-fr/strings.xml would hold French strings, and so on.

Answered By - CommonsWare