Line Break in XML formatting?

Question

when editing a String in XML I need to add line breaks. And I wanted to ask what is the RIGHT form when programming for android? Because <br> works but ECLIPSE marks the area as problematic. If I check out suggestions Eclipse tells me that I shall add a end tag </br> - IF I add that the line break dissapears...

So the one works but is marked as problematic, the other works not but Eclipse tells me its ok..

What form shall I use?

Answer 1

Use \n for a line break and \t if you want to insert a tab.

You can also use some XML tags for basic formatting: <b> for bold text, <i> for italics, and <u> for underlined text.

Other formatting options are shown in this article on the Android Developers' site:
https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/resources/string-resource.html#FormattingAndStyling

Answer 2

If you are refering to res strings, use CDATA with \n.

<string name="about">
    <![CDATA[
 Author: Sergio Abreu\n
 http://sites.sitesbr.net
  ]]>        
</string>

Answer 3

Also you can add <br> instead of \n.

And then you can add text to TexView:

articleTextView.setText(Html.fromHtml(textForTextView));

Answer 4

Take note: I have seen other posts that say 
 will give you a paragraph break, which oddly enough works in the Android xml String.xml file, but will NOT show up in a device when testing (no breaks at all show up). Therefore, the \n shows up on both.

Answer 5

Here is what I use when I don't have access to the source string, e.g. for downloaded HTML:

// replace newlines with <br>
public static String replaceNewlinesWithBreaks(String source) {
    return source != null ? source.replaceAll("(?:\n|\r\n)","<br>") : "";
}

For XML you should probably edit that to replace with <br/> instead.

Example of its use in a function (additional calls removed for clarity):

// remove HTML tags but preserve supported HTML text styling (if there is any)
public static CharSequence getStyledTextFromHtml(String source) {
    return android.text.Html.fromHtml(replaceNewlinesWithBreaks(source));
}

...and a further example:

textView.setText(getStyledTextFromHtml(someString));