Chapter 3: Exploring Android Studio and the Project Structure

In this chapter, we will create and run two more Android projects. The purpose of these exercises is to explore more deeply Android Studio and the structure of Android projects.

When we build our apps ready for deployment, the code and the resource files need to be packed away in an Android Package (APK) file—just right. Therefore, all the layout files (and other resources that we will soon discover) need to be in their correct structures.

Fortunately, Android Studio handles this for us when we create a project from a template. However, we still need to know how to find and amend these files, how to add our own (and sometimes remove) files created by Android Studio, and how the resource files are interlinked, sometimes with each other and sometimes with the Java code (autogenerated and our own).

Along with understanding the composition of our projects, it will also be beneficial to make sure we get the most...