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Android comes with lots of system resources (android.R) that can be used to save you time and make your application lighter.

For example, I recently discovered that Android provides localized strings for Yes (android.R.string.yes), No (android.R.string.no), Cancel (android.R.string.cancel) and Ok (android.R.string.ok), among other strings.

What other system resources do you recommend using? Or is there a reason to avoid using system resources?

Edit: As noted by Tomas, some of this resources might not produce the results you would expect (particularly, android.R.string.yes/no returns OK/Cancel instead of Yes/No, as reported here). For greater control, you can copy system resources from the Android source code.

hpique
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4 Answers4

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You can find a full listing of all system resources in the android package.

Every time I want to do something on Android I check to see if there's a system resource that covers what I want to do. It is helpful to import the Android source code (in particular, their /res/ folder) when searching for already-implemented resources that you might want, so you can see their specific implementation.

Personally, I find myself most often using:

  • Built-in Android layouts for standard tasks, such as spinner dropdowns.
  • Android ids (android.R.id), because you are often required to use these if you want to use some of Android's widgets (for example, TabHost/TabWidget requires you to use "android:id/tabhost", "android:id/tabs" and "android:id/tabcontent" if you want to implement an XML layout).
  • Built-in colors, especially android.R.color.transparent.
  • Android's built-in fade-in and fade-out animations in android.R.anim.
Olumide
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Dan Lew
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    Bear in mind that those resources ship with your SDK. Look in the `data/res/` directory underneath a specific platform directory. I would be careful reusing things that might get changed by OEMs -- drawable resources would be one example problem area. – CommonsWare Apr 13 '10 at 18:26
  • @CommonsWare When running on an actual device, where are the resources loaded from? – ThomasW Oct 18 '17 at 06:41
  • @ThomasW: Beyond "somewhere in the device firmware", I cannot say, as I have never gone looking for specifics. Sorry! – CommonsWare Oct 18 '17 at 11:38
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    Wow. There are places even @CommonsWare hasn't ventured. – ThomasW Jan 15 '18 at 02:23
  • @ThomasW resources are loaded from `resources.arsc` file. When you build your apk `aapt` compiles your resources and generates `resources.arsc` file which shipped inside apk. – Bek Jul 02 '19 at 08:58
  • @Bek we're talking about system resources, not app resources. – ThomasW Jul 02 '19 at 10:41
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You can access system resources from xml by qualifying them with the android package name, i.e. "@android:string/ok"

ehartwell
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As CommonsWare mentioned, you don't have to download the Android source repository to inspect the resources; just go to <android-sdk-dir>/platforms/android-X.X/data/res/. However, if you start using these you will quickly become disappointed to find that most of them are not available through the android.R class. Most of the time I have to import them into my Eclipse workspace anyway. :-(

My favorite resources are the drawables that show differently based on a control's focused/pressed/disabled states (like android.R.drawable.btn_default). I use those or tweak them to create custom buttons for my apps. As you can see if you look at /data/res/drawable/btn_default.xml, they are defined as a <selector> XML element, which gets inflated into a StateListDrawable at runtime. You could also create your own StateListDrawables and they're super useful, both as View backgrounds and as a button's "compound drawable" (see TextView.setCompoundDrawables()).

Neil Traft
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Please note that the translations are really bad.

For example the German "no" in android-25 is "Abbrechen" which actually means "cancel". "Yes" is translated as "OK"...

I'm not sure how good the other languages are, so I would use an own translation.

Thomas_D
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  • It's not that the translations are bad. As OP noted in his question, it's that the `android.R.string.yes/no` returns `OK/Cancel` instead of `Yes/No`. This is likely because the developer thought `android.R.string.yes/no` was more concise than `android.R.string.ok/cancel`. – Patrick Sep 13 '17 at 21:07
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    Also, `android.R.string.ok` doesn't appear to be translated. It is "OK" for every language I've tested. (For some languages, "OK" is not appropriate.) – ThomasW Oct 19 '17 at 02:40
  • `android.R.string.ok` is "D'acord" for `ca` aka catalan. It means "alright" or "okay". It is translated differently in some languages. – Carsten Hagemann Aug 03 '23 at 13:13