What to put as launcher:ClassName for launcher favorite

Question

My client wants to put the app I developed to be in their launcher favorite and they are asking for the package name and class name of the launcher. Package name is quite straig

Answer 1

(Congrats on getting into their favorites, should you provide a Play link ;-)

As you say, the package name is easy, it is the defined in the manifest as a package attribute of the manifest element:

<manifest .... package="com.sushihangover.playscriptstarling2" ...>

The launcher class name is the class that is tagged within the Activity C# class attribute, "MainLauncher = true"

In turn, this creates the activity attribute fragment within the manifest:

<activity android:icon="@mipmap/icon" android:label="PlayScriptStarling2" android:name="md5d2519388ea1895e3e3594794d2e0c4ce.MainActivity">
  <intent-filter>
    <action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN" />
    <category android:name="android.intent.category.LAUNCHER" />
  </intent-filter>
</activity>

Your class name is the full android:name attribute since it does NOT begin with a period. This is a generated unique subclass identifier, thus in my example this is the full class name:

md5d2519388ea1895e3e3594794d2e0c4ce.MainActivity

While most people will never see this class ID, I highly recommend you override this generate class identifier and use the dot class notation that includes your package name.

Normally, this is done by providing a name using the android:name that BEGINS with a period (this is standard Android class naming 101 ;-) but Xamarin currently does not support Android shorthand-style class names beginning w/ a dot so you need to use the fully qualified package name with your class ID name.

So the Main Activity attribute becomes:

[Activity(Label = "PlayScriptStarling2", Name = "com.sushihangover.playscriptstarling2.MyBigBadGameEveryOneShouldPlay", MainLauncher = true, Icon = "@mipmap/icon")]

And the generated manifest becomes:

<activity android:icon="@mipmap/icon" android:label="PlayScriptStarling2" android:name="com.sushihangover.playscriptstarling2.MyBigBadGameEveryOneShouldPlay">
  <intent-filter>
    <action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN" />
    <category android:name="android.intent.category.LAUNCHER" />
  </intent-filter>
</activity>

And my launcher class name becomes:

com.sushihangover.playscriptstarling2.MyBigBadGameEveryOneShouldPlay

Android Docs:

Declaring class names

Many elements correspond to Java objects, including elements for the application itself (the element) and its principal components — activities (), services (), broadcast receivers (), and content providers ().

If you define a subclass, as you almost always would for the component classes (Activity, Service, BroadcastReceiver, and ContentProvider), the subclass is declared through a name attribute. The name must include the full package designation. For example, an Service subclass might be declared as follows:

<manifest . . . >
    <application . . . >
        <service android:name="com.example.project.SecretService" . . . >
            . . .
        </service>
        . . .
    </application>
</manifest>

However, as a shorthand, if the first character of the string is a period, the string is appended to the application's package name (as specified by the element's package attribute).

The following assignment is the same as the one above:

<manifest package="com.example.project" . . . >
    <application . . . >
        <service android:name=".SecretService" . . . >
            . . .
        </service>
        . . .
    </application>
</manifest>

When starting a component, Android creates an instance of the named subclass. If a subclass isn't specified, it creates an instance of the base class.

Ref: http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/manifest/manifest-intro.html

Ref: https://developer.xamarin.com/guides/android/advanced_topics/working_with_androidmanifest.xml/#Intent_Actions_and_Features