Getting a value from a Spinner selection

Question

I want a spinner to return an value to me once the user has selected an item.

I know I could use a button and then use spinner.getSelectedItemPosition() in the OnClick(), but I want the value to be returned as soon as the user has selected amongst the spinner choices. Thus, I had thought to use an OnItemSelectedListener.

int valueINeed;
subGoalSpinner.setOnItemSelectedListener(new OnItemSelectedListener() {
        @Override
        public void onItemSelected(AdapterView<?> arg0, View arg1,
                int arg2, long arg3) {
            int index = arg0.getSelectedItemPosition();
            //I now want to somehow get the value of the index for use outside of this code block
}

I can obviously not use a straight return statement as the method has a void return type. Furthermore, I cannot set valueINeed = index unless I make valueINeed final . I am not sure I want to do that as what happens if the user changes his/her mind and I need to reassign the value?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Just declare the variable int valueINeed; as a global variable. Than you can use the following:

subGoalSpinner.setOnItemSelectedListener(new OnItemSelectedListener() {
    @Override
    public void onItemSelected(AdapterView<?> arg0, View arg1,
            int arg2, long arg3) {
        valueINeed = subGoalSpinner.getSelectedItemPosition();
        //I now want to somehow get the value of the index for use outside of this code block
}

Answer 2

TronicZomB's answer is correct, but you won't be notified when the global variable changes. If you need to do something with valueINeed as soon as it's changed in the Spinner , you have two options:

1. Take the code that uses valueINeed and put it all inside of the onItemSelected function
2. Create a seperate function that you call from within the onItemSelected function.

Example of #2:

subGoalSpinner.setOnItemSelectedListener(new OnItemSelectedListener() 
{
    @Override
    public void onItemSelected(AdapterView<?> arg0, View arg1, int arg2, long arg3) 
    {
        valueINeed = subGoalSpinner.getSelectedItemPosition();
        updateView(valueINeed);
    }
}

In this case, updateView is a function that takes in valueINeed as a parameter and does something with it (like updating a TextView ).