Help with spinner - Android

So this is actually help making an app not a ROM. I am trying to use a spinner in my app as a drop down menu.
Here is the xml code:
<Spinner
android:id="@+id/fromSpinner"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:spinnerMode="dropdown"
android:entries="@array/from_array" />
Here is the Java code:
Spinner fromSpinner = (Spinner) findViewById(R.id.fromSpinner);
Spinner toSpinner = (Spinner) findViewById(R.id.toSpinner);
ArrayAdapter<String> toAdapter = new ArrayAdapter<String>(this, R.id.toSpinner, R.array.to_array);
toSpinner.setAdapter(toAdapter);
ArrayAdapter<String> fromAdapter = new ArrayAdapter<String>(this, R.id.fromSpinner, R.array.from_array);
fromSpinner.setAdapter(fromAdapter);
String toCurrency = (String) toSpinner.getSelectedItem();
String fromCurrency = (String) fromSpinner.getSelectedItem();
I'm not sure what the adapters do but I think I need them. Anyway toCurrency and fromCurrency aren't getting the values they are supposed to get. Anyone know what I am doing wrong. I am a complete noob say it may be something really dumb.

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Don't know if this is helpful. Just put the source for the whole app at https://github.com/Dmobbjr/CurrencyCalculator

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Really? I know some developers here could figure this out in ~10 minutes.

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I'm not able to look deeper but it would help for next time if you could post the value you are getting and the value that should be there.
I'm going to guess you are getting either the first element in the array or null?
You haven't selected a value anywhere and there is no evidence of a user interaction before you try and get the selected value so either there is no value selected or the first element in the array is selected (by default) and you are getting its value.
Have you looked through the documentation for Spinners in the API Guides section of the Android Developers website? I can tell the answer is no because if you had you would know why you need the Adapters.

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Kavrocks said:
I'm not able to look deeper but it would help for next time if you could post the value you are getting and the value that should be there.
I'm going to guess you are getting either the first element in the array or null?
You haven't selected a value anywhere and there is no evidence of a user interaction before you try and get the selected value so either there is no value selected or the first element in the array is selected (by default) and you are getting its value.
Have you looked through the documentation for Spinners in the API Guides section of the Android Developers website? I can tell the answer is no because if you had you would know why you need the Adapters.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I will change it to see what the value is later but I know it is not getting the value of the first element.
The user interaction happens before any of the code above is executed. I assumed that when I create the spinners and adapters in java it just takes what was already selected. Do I have to initialize the spinners and adapters before user selection?
Also I did read the documentation which is why I even knew about adapters but I am still a noob so some of the docs can be pretty confusing.

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dmobbjr said:
I will change it to see what the value is later but I know it is not getting the value of the first element.
The user interaction happens before any of the code above is executed. I assumed that when I create the spinners and adapters in java it just takes what was already selected. Do I have to initialize the spinners and adapters before user selection?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The spinner needs to be initialised with data before the user selects it otherwise it would be empty. That's what the ArrayAdapter in your OP is for (which is explained in the API Guides section on spinners), however the android:entries attribute in your xml file is also adding data to the spinner so you have redundant code.
The getSelectedItem() will return an Object containing the currently selected item but as you are changing the data in the spinner beforehand this could be altering the data in the selected item position.
I recommend you remove the android:entries attribute and move the code except for the getSelectedItem() lines to the onCreate() method of your Activity.
You really need to provide more info for me about what is happening for me to help. I can't view the source on github at the moment.

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If I implement the spinners in onCreate(), how do I access them from my button's onClick() method. Wouldn't the spinners be local to the onCreate method and therefore not accessible outside of it?

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dmobbjr said:
If I implement the spinners in onCreate(), how do I access them from my button's onClick() method. Wouldn't the spinners be local to the onCreate method and therefore not accessible outside of it?
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Click to collapse
You aren't implementing them in onCreate(), they are implemented in xml which is normally inflated in onCreate() when you call setContentView(). All you are doing is adding the data to them in onCreate(). After the layout is inflated everything in that layout file is global (can be accessed anywhere) to that class.
You can get a reference to them anywhere in your code, providing the layout that contains them has been inflated into memory, using findViewById() and passing in the id of the spinner you want to get a reference to.
You can declare a class variable to store the reference to these and then just get the reference once in onCreate() and access it anywhere else in your code, ie. in onClick(), instead of having persistant calls to findViewById(). This approach is more efficient and cleaner.

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When I try to call findViewById(toSpinner).getSelectedItem() The compiler says it can't resolve toSpinner as a variable. When I try to call R.id.toSpinner.getSelectedItem() it says it can't invoke getSelectedItem() on and int. I still cant access the spinners from within my onClick(). Sorry for the extreme noobishness but I just clearly do not know as much java as I should.

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dmobbjr said:
When I try to call findViewById(toSpinner).getSelectedItem() The compiler says it can't resolve toSpinner as a variable. When I try to call R.id.toSpinner.getSelectedItem() it says it can't invoke getSelectedItem() on and int. I still cant access the spinners from within my onClick(). Sorry for the extreme noobishness but I just clearly do not know as much java as I should.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You are calling findViewById() returns a View object, you can't call getSelectedItem() on a View object. You first need to cast the View returned by findViewById to a spinner and then call getSelectedItem() on the spinner.
R.id.toSpinner is just an integer value pointing to a resource.
I already pointed out how you should go about calling getSelectedItem() on your spinner.
You can declare a class variable to store the reference to these and then just get the reference once in onCreate() and access it anywhere else in your code, ie. in onClick(), instead of having persistant calls to findViewById(). This approach is more efficient and cleaner.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'll write the outline of the code you need for you.
Code:
public class TestActivity extends Activity {
private Spinner toSpinner;
public void onCreate() {
toSpinner = (Spinner) findViewById(R.id.toSpinner);
}
public void onClick() {
toSpinner.getSelectedItem();
}
}