Android Resource ID

Question

Must the resource ID's for views in XML layouts be unique across all layouts?

For example, I'm working on a little recipe manager app. I have a layout file for adding a new ingredient. In this layout I have an EditText for the ingredient that I'd like to call "edt_name". But I'm afraid that this name is too general; e.g. I might also have an EditText for a recipe name, a cooking procedure name, etc in other XML layout files.

However, I also don't want to make the labels more complex than necessary. I'd like to avoid calling the aforementioned EditText "edt_name_new_ingredient" if I could.

I'm curious as to how developers organize their resources in general. Android doesn't support sub-directories for resources as far as I know, so naming schemes can get really messy.

Answer 1

No, resource ID should not be unique across different xml layouts however they must be unique in a particular xml file.

Answer 2

Resource IDs are namespaced within the package. When you access a resource (in XML, for example), the package name is implicitly set to the current one. You can have other resource files in a different package and refer to those within your code or XML (this is how one accesses the platform resources that come with the SDK).

Similarly in code, you can access a different package's R class and use its resources, but all those within the same package must have unique names.

More info can be found in the documentation here.