Referencing style attributes

A style attribute resource allows you to reference the value of an attribute in the currently-applied theme. Referencing a style attribute allows you to customize the look of UI elements by styling them to match standard variations supplied by the current theme, instead of supplying a hard-coded value. Referencing a style attribute essentially says, "use the style that is defined by this attribute, in the current theme."

To reference a style attribute, the name syntax is almost identical to the normal resource format, but instead of the at-symbol (@), use a question-mark (?), and the resource type portion is optional. For instance:

For example, here's how you can reference an attribute to set the text color to match the "primary" text color of the system theme:

Here, the android:textColor attribute specifies the name of a style attribute in the current theme. Android now uses the value applied to the android:textColorSecondary style attribute as the value for android:textColor in this widget. Because the system resource tool knows that an attribute resource is expected in this context, you do not need to explicitly state the type (which would be ?android:attr/textColorSecondary)—you can exclude the attr type.

Accessing original files

While uncommon, you might need access your original files and directories. If you do, then saving your files in res/won't work for you, because the only way to read a resource from res/ is with the resource ID. Instead, you can save your resources in the assets/ directory.

Files saved in the assets/ directory are not given a resource ID, so you can't reference them through the R class or from XML resources. Instead, you can query files in the assets/ directory like a normal file system and read raw data using AssetManager.

However, if all you require is the ability to read raw data (such as a video or audio file), then save the file in the res/raw/directory and read a stream of bytes using openRawResource().

Accessing platform resources

Android contains a number of standard resources, such as styles, themes, and layouts. To access these resource, qualify your resource reference with the android package name. For example, Android provides a layout resource you can use for list items in a ListAdapter:

In this example, simple_list_item_1 is a layout resource defined by the platform for items in a ListView. You can use this instead of creating your own layout for list items.