android cursor.moveToNext()?

Question

I am trying to query all the columns in a table into one long text view and/or string. I know this might not be the right way to do things but I have to do this. Correct me if I am wrong, I was under the impression that move next would get the next column in the row:

Cursor c = db.get();
if(c.moveToFirst){
  do{
    string = c.getString(0);
  }while(c.moveToNext);
}

I thought that this would get the first column and display all of its contents instead I get the first column and first row. What am I doing wrong? Is there a better or real way to get this information without using a ListView?

Answer 1

cursor.moveToFirst() moves the cursor to the first row. If you know that you have 6 columns, and you want one string containing all the columns, try the following.

c.moveToFirst();
StringBuilder stringBuilder = new StringBuilder();
for(int i = 0; i < 6; i++){
   stringBuilder.append(c.getString(i));
}

// to return the string, you would do stringBuilder.toString();

Answer 2

I am coding my loops over the cusror like this:

    cursor.moveToFirst();
    while(!cursor.isAfterLast()) {

            cursor.getString(cursor.getColumnIndex("column_name"));

        cursor.moveToNext();
    }

That always works. This will retrieve the values of column "column_name" of all rows. Your mistake is that you loop over the rows and not the columns. To loop over the columns:

cursor.moveToFirst();    
    for(int i = 0; i < cursor.getColumnNames().length; i++){
        cursor.getString(i);
    }

That will loop over the columns of the first row and retrieve each columns value.