Question

How can I create a layout file with data and fill them with some example data so that I can see what I have done without producing warnings.

Here is an example:

If I remove the text (which wants Android Lint) I have a plain blue screen, which is not helpful at all.

By the way this is the warning:

[I18N] Hardcoded string “Foobar”, should use @string resource example.xml /Example/res/layout Line 42 Android Lint Problem

Answer 1

Create an entry in your strings.xml for each of your example Strings.

On the other hand, this is a Lint warning. You can safely ignore this without causing immediate harm to your app, as these are only meant to guide you in best practices.

Go to the Eclipse preferences, into the Android submenu, then into the Lint Error Checking menu and disable the HardcodedText warning.

Second Method

Instead of setting the example text through XML, use the setText() through Java code, and enclose it in an if condition as follows:

if(BuildConfig.DEBUG) {
    view.setText("My example text");
}

BuildConfig.DEBUG was added in ADT 17, and is true whenever you do a debug build. When you export the apk, it is set to false. As the variable is set to false and never reassigned, the Java compiler will optimize your code and remove these statements. They will not be compiled into a production app.