How do you add user defined properties/values in to the Android manifest file?

Question

I want to add a custom attribute / property into the manifest file, and be able to read it at run time. I want to do this so I can customize the app's behavior via these manifest properties. How can this be done?

Answer 1

You can add meta-data to your AndroidManifest.xml file and then read that in your application.

Write the data like so:

<meta-data android:value="bar" android:name="foo"></meta-data>

And read the data like so:

ApplicationInfo ai = context.getPackageManager().getApplicationInfo(context.getPackageName(), PackageManager.GET_META_DATA);
Object value = (Object)ai.metaData.get("foo");

See http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/manifest/meta-data-element.html

Answer 2

You can create an empty resource file in res/values and add strings and items (for bool or integer values) to it.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<resources>
    <string name="foo">bar</string">
    <item name="testint" type="integer">33</item>
    <item name="testbool" type="bool">true</item>
</resources>

Alternatively you could simply use a Constants object in which you define your properties as final static variables.