1Images, layout descriptions, binary blobs and string dictionaries can be included 2in your application as resource files. Various Android APIs are designed to 3operate on the resource IDs instead of dealing with images, strings or binary blobs 4directly. 5 6For example, a sample Android app that contains a user interface layout (main.axml), 7an internationalization string table (strings.xml) and some icons (drawable-XXX/icon.png) 8would keep its resources in the "Resources" directory of the application: 9 10Resources/ 11 drawable/ 12 icon.png 13 14 layout/ 15 main.axml 16 17 values/ 18 strings.xml 19 20In order to get the build system to recognize Android resources, set the build action to 21"AndroidResource". The native Android APIs do not operate directly with filenames, but 22instead operate on resource IDs. When you compile an Android application that uses resources, 23the build system will package the resources for distribution and generate a class called "R" 24(this is an Android convention) that contains the tokens for each one of the resources 25included. For example, for the above Resources layout, this is what the R class would expose: 26 27public class R { 28 public class drawable { 29 public const int icon = 0x123; 30 } 31 32 public class layout { 33 public const int main = 0x456; 34 } 35 36 public class strings { 37 public const int first_string = 0xabc; 38 public const int second_string = 0xbcd; 39 } 40} 41 42You would then use R.drawable.icon to reference the drawable/icon.png file, or R.layout.main 43to reference the layout/main.axml file, or R.strings.first_string to reference the first 44string in the dictionary file values/strings.xml. 45
