String Resources

Description

Android allows you to define strings in one or more XML resource files.

These XML files reside in the /res/values subdirectory.

You can name the XML files the way you like, although you commonly see the file name as strings.xml.

Example

The following code shows an example of a string-resource file.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<resources>
   <string name="hello">hello</string>
   <string name="app_name">hello appname</string>
</resources>

Note

When this file is created or updated, the Eclipse ADT plug-in automatically creates or updates a Java class in your application's root package called R.java with unique IDs for the two string resources specified.

Regardless of the number of resource files, there is only one R.java file.

The generated IDs in R.java point to ints rather than strings.

Most methods that take strings also take these resource identifiers as inputs. Android resolves those ints to strings where necessary.

Android takes any number of arbitrary files as long as the structure of the XML file looks like the xml above and the files reside in the /res/values subdirectory.