How to use the selected item of a spinner in an if statement (Android in eclipse)

Question

Hi I have a spinner (spinner5) and whenever the user selects an item that says "age" I want the textview to change to 21. I have tried the following but it doesnt work. I can do this by using if (getSelectedItemPosition() == 1) but the spinner's contents are dynamic so thats not an option.

            if (spinner5.getSelectedItem().toString()=="age"){
            textArea.setText("21");
        }

Answer 1

Always Use .equals when compare two string because == only use for Primitive data types

.equals =compare two string value == =compare two string refrences

if (spinner5.getSelectedItem().toString().equals("age")){
            textArea.setText("21");
        }

Answer 2

Well assuming that your Item's toString() method is returning "age", then you need to do a string comparison instead of a ==. In Java, operators can't be overloaded, so == compares the actual object references as opposed to the contents. What you're looking for is:

spinner5.getSelectedItem().toString().equals("age")

as a rule, always use .equals() unless your type is a primitive, like int, float, etc.