How to change a TextView's background color with a color defined in my values/colors.xml file?

Question

I am working on an Android project using Eclipse. I want to change the background color of a TextView using one of the colors I've defined in res/values/colors.xml. These colors are all available by using R.color.color_name.

My problem is that this simply won't work. Changing to one of my defined colors always leaves the TextView's background set to its default color, in this case, black. If I use one of Java's built-in colors, it works fine. I'm thinking it's a color definition problem, something involving how I actually define my colors in my XML, but I'm not sure.

// This works:
weight1.setBackgroundColor(Color.BLACK);

// This does not work:
weight2.setBackgroundColor(R.color.darkgrey);

// Color Definition: (this is in a separate xml file, not in my Java code)
<color name = "darkgrey">#A9A9A9</color>

Answer 1

Actually it's even easier with this:

weight2.setBackgroundResource(R.color.darkgrey);

Answer 2

It isn't working because you're setting the background color to the key itself (which is an hexadecimal value like 0x7f050008) instead of its value. To use it's value, try:

weight2.setBackgroundColor(getResources().getColor(R.color.darkgrey));