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Android Build an Interactive Story App (Retired) Intents and Multiple Activities Sending Data to a New Activity

Ben Morse
Ben Morse
6,068 Points
Posted by Ben Morse
Ben Morse
6,068 Points

"Key" what does he mean?

When talking about the "key variable" when passing data through the intent method, I am still unclean about what "key" means. If you were to define it, how would you?

code: intent.putExtra("name", name);

Is "name" the declaring variable that is going to hold a value(name) as it is passed to to the next activity?

1 Answer

James Anwyl
.a{fill-rule:evenodd;}techdegree seal-36
James Anwyl
Full Stack JavaScript Techdegree Graduate 49,960 Points

I believe he is referring to a key value pair. A key is an identifier, a value is a variable or some sort of data linked to that key.

Key1: Value1
Key2: Value2

By referencing Key1 we can get the value associated with it (Value1)

In this example:

intent.putExtra("name", name);

The first part, "name" is the key.

The second part, name is a variable (a string in this case) which was defined earlier in the code.

This example may help.

I'm not great with Java so not sure of the syntax but the concept of key value pairs is the same in many different languages.

Hope this helps :)

Ben Morse
Ben Morse
6,068 Points
Ben Morse
Ben Morse
6,068 Points

So that Key is Identifying with the value correct??

James Anwyl
.a{fill-rule:evenodd;}techdegree seal-36
James Anwyl
Full Stack JavaScript Techdegree Graduate 49,960 Points

Yep pretty much. It's also known as a name:value pair. The key is just a name that refers to a value.

  • Color: "Blue"
  • Animal: "Dog"
  • Weight: "20kg"

We can use the key Color to get the value "Blue"

Hope that makes sense.