Android: Connecting buttons to the java file through a for loop - for-loop

Question

I'm trying to create a chess game for Android and would like to avoid having to declare every button when they are all named so similarly. I tried to generate all of the A + Num button using this for loop.
int RowNum ;
for (RowNum = 1; RowNum < 8; RowNum++) {
String Position = "A" + RowNum;
Button Position = (Button)findViewById(R.id.Position);
}
But I have an error: Variable 'Position' is already defined in the scope.
I would really appreciate if someone could explain to me the best way to go about doing this.
Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

R.Id.A1, R.id.A2, etc. are identifiers and each of them is mapped to a single integer during compilation of R class. Thus, you cannot manipulate the 'R.id.sth' as a string because it will not compile properly.
A way to solve that is search for the string in resources dynamically with a code like this:
Button[] buttons=new Button[8];
for(int RowNum=0; RowNum<8; RowNum++) {
String buttonID = "A"+(RowNum+1);
int resID = getResources().getIdentifier(buttonID, "id", getPackageName());
buttons[RowNum] = ((Button) findViewById(resID));
}
Alternatively, to avoid the time overhead of dynamic search you can add a resource array:
int[] butIds = {R.id.A1, R.id.A2,...};
Button[] buttons= new Button[8];
for(int RowNum=0; RowNum<8, RowNum++) {
buttons[RowNum]= ((Button) findViewById(butIds[RowNum]));
}
You can even store the resource array in XML form and retrieve it as a TypedArray.

Answer 2

You called your String and Button object both Position. Give them different names, e.g.
for (int RowNum = 1; RowNum < 8; RowNum++) {
String currentPosition = "A" + RowNum;
//Why doesn this not use the Position (now 'currentPosition' variable)?
Button currentButton = (Button)findViewById(R.id.Position);
}
Semantically I still don't get that piece of code because Position is not used within the argument of findViewById, to which you pass a static variable R.id.Position.