Organizing code files/XML files for Android SDK

Question

Can someone provide some strategies as to organizing my project so that it is clean? Say I have a bunch of activities; is it good to place them all into a separate package, while putting other classes (such as custom Adapters) in another package to separate "logic" better?

Also, when creating XML files for layouts, how would I separate the layout XML files logically if I have some layouts that are for certain activities and other XML layout files for custom "rows" (to use with an Adapter) I don't want to just throw them all into res/layout -- it would become such a huge hassle when the project gets really big.

Answer 1

Say I have a bunch of activities; is it good to place them all into a separate package, while putting other classes (such as custom Adapters) in another package to separate "logic" better?

I'm not sure what best practices are, but here's how I organize my applications: I tend to put my activities in com.foo.appname.activity, content providers in com.foo.appname.content, services in com.foo.appname.service, and generic utilities in com.foo.appname.utils.

For helper classes like Adapters that are only used by one activity, I typically make them static inner classes. If they're used in multiple activities, I'd give them package level visibility in the activity package.

I don't want to just throw them all into res/layout

I don't think that the res directories are allowed to have subdirectories, so the best you can do is to come up with a good naming scheme. I typically prefix the layout file with the type: activity_foo.xml, fragment_foo.xml, etc.

Answer 2

All these suggestions, of course are your choice. But when I develop something, I use to separate logical layer from "visible" layers and classes. I mean that I use different packages for

a) Activites
b) Classes or Objects
c) Interface classes
d) Database classes
e) Interaction with Database

I also create different packages for all of them, so you can organize them better. But this is always your choice.

And with your layout... I don't know if you can organize better the layout. When you generate your project, if you see, in your gen folder there's the R.java class. That class auto-detects folders such as layout, drawable, raw... But I'm not sure if you can make subfolders inside it.