ANDROID MANIFEST FILE

The AndroidManifest.xml file contains information of your package, including components

of the application such as activities, services, broadcast receivers, content providers etc.

It performs some other tasks also:

• It is responsible to protect the application to access any protected parts by providing

the permissions.
• It also declares the android api that the application is going to use.
• It lists the instrumentation classes. The instrumentation classes provide profiling and
other information. This information is removed just before the application is
published etc.

This is the required xml file for all the android application and located inside the root
directory:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

<manifest xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools">

<application
android:allowBackup="true"
android:dataExtractionRules="@xml/data_extraction_rules"
android:fullBackupContent="@xml/backup_rules"
android:icon="@mipmap/ic_launcher"
android:label="@string/app_name"
android:roundIcon="@mipmap/ic_launcher_round"
android:supportsRtl="true"
android:theme="@style/Theme.Maina2"
tools:targetApi="31">
<activity
android:name=".MainActivity"
android:exported="true">
<intent-filter>
<action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN" />
 <category android:name="android.intent.category.LAUNCHER" />
</intent-filter>
</activity>
</application>

</manifest>

EXTERNALIZING RESOURCES

There are many more items which you use to build a good Android application. Apart from
coding for the application, you take care of various other resources like static content that
your code uses, such as bitmaps, colors, layout definitions, user interface strings, animation
instructions, and more. These resources are always maintained separately in various sub-
directories under res/ directory of the project.

Organize resource in Android Studio

 Directory & Resource Type
1 anim/
XML files that define property animations. They are saved in res/anim/ folder
and accessed from the R.anim class.
2 color/
XML files that define a state list of colors. They are saved in res/color/ and
accessed from the R.color class.
3 drawable/
Image files like .png, .jpg, .gif or XML files that are compiled into bitmaps, state
lists, shapes, animation accessed from the R.drawable class.
4 layout/
XML files that define a user interface layout. They are saved in res/layout/ and
accessed from the R.layout class.
5 menu/
XML files that define application menus, such as an Options Menu, Context
Menu, or Sub Menu. Accessed from the R.menu class.
6 raw/
Arbitrary files to save in their raw form. You need to call
Resources.openRawResource() with the resoufiles
7 values/
XML files that contain simple values, such as strings, integers, and colors. For
example, here are some files in this directory −
• arrays.xml for resource arrays, and accessed from the R.array class.
• integers.xml for resource integers, and accessed from the R.integer class.
• bools.xml for resource boolean, and accessed from the R.bool class.
• colors.xml for color values, and accessed from the R.color class.
• dimens.xml for dimension values, and accessed from the R.dimen class.
• strings.xml for string values, and accessed from the R.string class.
• styles.xml for styles, and accessed from the R.style class.
8 xml/
Arbitrary XML files that can be read at runtime by calling Resources.getXML().
You can save various configurations.
Alternative Resources

Your application should provide alternative resources to support specific device

configurations. For example, you should include alternative drawable resources ( i.e.images )
for different screen resolution and alternative string resources for different languages. At
runtime, Android detects the current device configuration and loads the appropriate resources
for your application.

To specify configuration-specific alternatives for a set of resources, follow the following

steps:-

• Create a new directory in res/ named in the form -. Here resources_name will be any
of the resources mentioned in the above table, like layout, drawable etc. The qualifier
will specify an individual configuration for which these resources are to be used.
• Save the respective alternative resources in this new directory. The resource files must
be named exactly the same as the default resource files as shown in the below
example, but these files will have content specific to the alternative. For example
though image file name will be same but for high resolution screen, its resolution will
be high.

Below is an example which specifies images for a default screen and alternative images for
high resolution screen.

MyProject/
app/
manifest/
AndroidManifest.xml
java/
MyActivity.java
res/
drawable/
icon.png
background.png
drawable-hdpi/
icon.png
background.png
 layout/
activity_main.xml
info.xml
values/
strings.xml

Below is another example which specifies layout for a default language and alternative layout
for Arabic language.

MyProject/
app/
manifest/
AndroidManifest.xml
java/
MyActivity.java
res/
drawable/
icon.png
background.png
drawable-hdpi/
icon.png
background.png
layout/
activity_main.xml
info.xml
layout-ar/
main.xml
values/
strings.xml

Accessing Resources
During your application development you will need to access defined resources either in your
code, or in your layout XML files. Following section explains how to access your resources
in both the scenarios: -

1) Accessing Resources in Code

When your Android application is compiled, a R class gets generated, which contains
resource IDs for all the resources available in your res/ directory. You can use R class to
access that resource using subdirectory and resource name or directly resource ID.

Example 1:

To access res/drawable/myimage.png and set an ImageView you will use following code: -

ImageView imageView = (ImageView) findViewById(R.id.myimageview);

imageView.setImageResource(R.drawable.myimage);
Here first line of the code make use of R.id.myimageview to get ImageView defined with id
myimageview in a Layout file. Second line of code makes use of R.drawable.myimage to get
an image with name myimage available in drawable sub-directory under /res.

Example 2:

Consider next example where res/values/strings.xml has following definition: -

<resources>
<string name="hello">Hello, World!</string>
</resources>
Now you can set the text on a TextView object with ID msg using a resource ID as follows:-

TextView msgTextView = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.msg);

msgTextView.setText(R.string.hello);

Example 3:

Consider a layout res/layout/activity_main.xml with the following definition: -

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

<LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
 android:layout_height="fill_parent"
android:orientation="vertical" >

<TextView android:id="@+id/text"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:text="Hello, I am a TextView" />
<Button android:id="@+id/button"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:text="Hello, I am a Button" />

</LinearLayout>
This application code will load this layout for an Activity, in the onCreate() method as
follows:-

public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {

super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);
}

2) Accessing Resources in XML

Consider the following resource XML res/values/strings.xml file that includes a color
resource and a string resource: -

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

<resources>
<color name="opaque_red">#f00</color>
<string name="hello">Hello!</string>
</resources>
Now you can use these resources in the following layout file to set the text color and text
string as follows: -
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<EditText xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="fill_parent"
android:textColor="@color/opaque_red"
android:text="@string/hello" />