what is ids.xml used for?

Question

Just a quick question, what is the ids.xml used for when developing an Android app? I saw an example on the android resources webpage which contained:

<resources>   <item name="snack" type="id"/> </resources> 

What would this be used for?

Answer 1

id.xml is generally used to declare the id's that you use for the views in the layouts.

you could use something like

<TextView android:id="@id/snack"> 

for your given xml.

Answer 2

ids.xml has the following advantage: all ids were declared, so compiler can recognize them. If something like this:

<TextView     android:id="@+id/text1"     android:layout_width="fill_parent"     android:layout_height="wrap_content"     android:layout_alignBelow="@id/text2"     android:text="...."/> <TextView     android:id="@+id/text2"     android:layout_width="fill_parent"     android:layout_height="wrap_content"     android:text="...."/> 

Can result in compiling error because text2 was refered before declared