How to find xml element with using element tag in android

Question

I have a table layout in xml with many rows and columns. I have given a particular tag to each and every column of the table.

Now I want to access a particular column based on some condition. How to I get the tag to match a string so that i can access the column?

for example, my xml code is like this

<TableLayout>

        <TableRow
            android:padding="10dp"
            android:id="@+id/row1"
            android:layout_height="wrap_content"
            android:weightSum="100"
            android:background="#ffffff"
            android:layout_margin="1dp"
            android:layout_weight="16.66">

            <TextView
                android:text="Day"
                android:textStyle="bold"
                android:clickable="true"             
                android:layout_width="fill_parent"
                android:layout_height="wrap_content"
                android:layout_weight="11.11" />


            <TextView
            android:layout_width="fill_parent"
            android:layout_height="wrap_content"
            android:layout_weight="11.11"
            android:id="@+id/tym1"
            android:tag="1"
            android:text="9:30" />

        <TextView
            android:layout_width="fill_parent"
            android:layout_height="wrap_content"
            android:layout_weight="11.11"
            android:id="@+id/tym2"
            android:tag="2"
            android:text="10:30" />

        <TextView
            android:layout_width="fill_parent"
            android:layout_height="wrap_content"
            android:layout_weight="11.11"
            android:id="@+id/tym3"
            android:tag="3"
            android:text="11:30" />

         <TextView
            android:layout_width="fill_parent"
            android:layout_height="wrap_content"
            android:layout_weight="11.11"
            android:id="@+id/tym4"
            android:tag="4"
            android:text="12:30" />

          <TextView
            android:layout_width="fill_parent"
            android:layout_height="wrap_content"
            android:layout_weight="11.11"
            android:id="@+id/tym5"
            android:tag="5"
            android:text="1:30" />

           <TextView
            android:layout_width="fill_parent"
            android:layout_height="wrap_content"
            android:layout_weight="11.11"
            android:id="@+id/tym6"
            android:tag="6"
            android:text="2:30" />

           <TextView
            android:layout_width="fill_parent"
            android:layout_height="wrap_content"
            android:layout_weight="11.11"
            android:id="@+id/tym7"
            android:tag="7"
            android:text="3:30" />

           <TextView
            android:layout_width="fill_parent"
            android:layout_height="wrap_content"
            android:layout_weight="11.11"
            android:id="@+id/tym8"
            android:tag="8"
            android:text="4:30" />
        </TableRow>
</TableLayout>

as you can see, there is a tag to each column. In my code, when the user enters the tag value, i want to access the column that matches the tag value.

for example in the java class--

String test="4";
TextView column_var;

now i want to set column_var to the TextView column in xml that has the same tag as the test string.

How to achieve that? please help!!!

Answer 1

You can find the view with specific tag with findViewWithTag()

But you should use IDs instead, because:

It is generally preferable to use IDs (through the android:id attribute) instead of tags because they are faster and allow for compile-time type checking.

EDIT: The method findViewWithTag() is a member method of View class. You have to find the parent view like this

View parentView = findViewById( R.id.row1 );

Then you can find your textview

TextView column_var = parentView.findViewWithTag(test);