I don't understand how "ben" is getting stored in the string resources file under the key we made.

This is going to be a bit of a lengthy explanation, but don't get overwhelmed. I went into a lot of detail, and tried to break down what is happening. Just read through it step by step and it should make sense. Let me know if you have any questions. Here goes nothing...

The answer to your question is actually in MainActivity.java

We aren't storing "ben" per say in the String Resource file. Take a look at the code below to see what's happening:

in MainActivity.java we are declaring a String variable "name" and retrieving the user's name that they input as below:

String name = mNameField.getText().toString();

Then we are passing this variable to the method we created called startStory. The startStory method takes a parameter of a String name. This is where we are passing the name we just retrieved into this method.

  // Calling the method to move to StoryActivity and passing in the name we   retrieved.
  startStory(name);

Now if you follow just the above explanation, So far:

1. We know we retrieved the name that the user entered
2. We passed that name to a method called startStory

But Why???? Let me explain by going over that startStory method and why it needed the name input, and what it is doing with that input.

So the startStory method goes like this:

 private void startStory(String name) {
        Intent intent = new Intent(this, StoryActivity.class);
        intent.putExtra(getString(R.string.key_name), name);
        startActivity(intent);

    }

in the above code we are first creating a new Intent object called intent. This the first step to passing information from one Activity to another. Here we are passing information form our MainAcitivity.java to StoryActivity.java so first we created the intent object with the statement:

Intent intent = new Intent(this, StoryActivity.class);

Now notice that at object creation we passed in (this, StoryActivity.class). This is because the object takes 2 parameters in this case. 1st the class we want to pass information from, 2nd the class we want to pass information too.

Next, we have the intent object created, now we have to decide what data we want to pass. We do this by using a method for the intent object called putExtra. This method takes two parameters, (String key, String value). So whatever we put in here can be pulled out in the other class by looking for the key. It acts kind of like a dictionary. Here is how we wrote this line of code:

intent.putExtra(getString(R.string.key_name), name);

// complete the code related to the intent by writing the following line of code:
startActivity(intent);

so the line to pay attention to is

intent.putExtra(getString(R.string.key_name), name);

The key here is R.string.key_name and the value is name which was the name we passed in earlier when we called the method.

When you look at how we pull this data out in the StoryActivity.java you will see why string resources are important.

In StoryActivity.java

after creating a new Intent object we retrieved the name that was passed onto this class form the previous class as below:

String name = intent.getStringExtra(getString(R.string.key_name));

using the getStringExtra method on the Intent object. The getStringExtra method takes a key and uses it to find the value for that key. It has to match what was used in the putExtra method otherwise it causes a fatal error. If we did not use stringResources we would have used the putExtra and getStringExtra methods as below:

// Passing class PutExtra method
intent.putExtra("name", name);

// Receiving class GetExtra method
intent.getStringExtra("name");

This is prone to error because if we used the key "name" in the put and used the key "Name" in the get it will cause a fatal error. Thus we use StringResources so we can declare one key name and use it for put and get.

In our cases we decided to use the below:

<string name="key_name">name</string>

where the name of the "key" is "key_name" and the value is: name and it is of type string.

and thus we can use the below code without typing the key, instead using the string resource.

// ManActivity code
.....
mStartButton.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() {
            @Override
            public void onClick(View v) {
                String name = mNameField.getText().toString();

                // Calling the method to move to StoryActivity
                startStory(name);
            }
        });
        //Toast.makeText(this, (CharSequence) mNameField, Toast.LENGTH_SHORT);
    }

    private void startStory(String name) {
        Intent intent = new Intent(this, StoryActivity.class);
        intent.putExtra(getString(R.string.key_name), name);
        startActivity(intent);

    }

.....

// StoryActivity code

.....

Intent intent = getIntent();
        String name = intent.getStringExtra(getString(R.string.key_name));

        if (name == null) {
            name = "No Name Passed In";
        }
        Log.d(TAG, name);
    }


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