What is the difference between getString() and getText()?

Question

I tried using getString() to get a string from my string.xml
However. I just found the getText() method can fetch HTML tags from my resources!

Say:

<string name="mySTring"><b><i>Hello Guys</i></b></string> 

it surprised me, because I had to use Html.fromHtml() to fetch the HTML tags - which is deprecated.

Which is the difference between the two methods?
Is there any advantage or disadvantage?

Answer 1

From the doc,

For Resources.getString():

Return the string value associated with a particular resource ID. It will be stripped of any styled text information.

For Resources.getText():

Return the string value associated with a particular resource ID. The returned object will be a String if this is a plain string; it will be some other type of CharSequence if it is styled.

[Note that Context.getText() and Context.getString() internally calls the methods from Resources.]

The doc says that getText() retains the styling while the getString() not. But you can use either one to get the string resource with HTML tags from strings.xml, but the way is different.

Using Resources.getText():

strings.xml:

<string name="styled_text">Hello, <b>World</b>!</string> 

You can just call getText() (note that it returns a CharSequence not a String, so it has the styling properties) and set the text to TextView. No need for Html.fromHtml().

mTextView.setText(getText(R.string.styled_text)); 

But the doc says only a limited HTML tags, such as <b>, <i>, <u> are supported by this method. The source code seems to suggest it supports more than that: <b>, <i>, <u>, <big>, <small>, <sup>, <sub>, <strike>, <li>, <marquee>, <a>, <font> and <annotation>

Using Resources.getString():

strings.xml:

<string name="styled_text"><![CDATA[Hello, <b>World</b>!]></string> 

You have to surround your string in a CDATA block and calling getString will return the string with HTML tags. Here you have to use Html.fromHtml().

mTextView.setText(Html.fromHtml( getString(R.string.styled_text))); 

Html.fromHtml() is deprecated in favor of a new method with flags parameter. So use it like this:

HtmlCompat.fromHtml(getString(R.string.styled_text)) 

Implementation of the util method HtmlCompat.fromHtml:

public class HtmlCompat {      public static CharSequence fromHtml(String source) {          if(Build.VERSION.SDK_INT < Build.VERSION_CODES.N) {              //noinspection deprecation             return Html.fromHtml(source);          } else {              return Html.fromHtml(source, Html.FROM_HTML_MODE_COMPACT);         }     }  } 

Answer 2

According to the docs there is practically no difference other than

You can use either getString(int) or getText(int) to retrieve a string.  getText(int) will retain any rich text styling applied to the string. 

So you would use getText for any localized resources for dealing with different language conversions for example but if you are just dealing with a string it literally doesn't matter.