Android™ Tablet Application Development For Dummies®

Understanding Project Structure

Congratulations again! You created your first application. You even did it without coding. It's nice that the ADT provides you with the tools to fire up a quick application, but that's not going to help you create your next blockbuster application. The beginning of this chapter walks you through how to create a boilerplate Android application with the New Android Project wizard. From here on, you will use that application's file structure that the Android wizard created for you.

The following sections discuss the files and folders in this structure. You shouldn't skim these sections — trust me, they're important! — because you spend your entire Android development career navigating them. Understanding what they do and how they got there is a key aspect of understanding Android development.

Navigating the app's folders

In Eclipse, click the Package Explorer tab and this will display the Hello Android project's folder structure so that it resembles Figure 5-20.

When the Hello Android project's file structure is expanded, the list of subfolders includes

• src: This folder contains the Java source code for your project.
• gen: This folder contains generated code that Eclipse contains.
• The Target Android library folder (in this case, Android 3.0): This folder includes the android.jar file, which is the current version of Android.
• assets: This folder stores ...