Question

So I started diving into the Android world and was trying to follow the official getting started guide from here: building-ui. The tutorial seems simple enough, but I’m running into issues where the things don’t quite match up.

For example:

1. In the tutorial, they say there’s a layout/main.xml file that’s created by default. I don’t get this file and instead, I get layout/my_first_activity.xml. The contents of these files are different as well.

Why is this? What am I doing wrong? Is the documentation old? (I’m using Eclipse Juno, and use Android 2.3 SDK). I try to format (copy the code from the tutorals) exactly but when I try to run the app I get errors.

—

Tutorial says main.xml file is like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:layout_width="fill_parent"
    android:layout_height="fill_parent"
    android:orientation="horizontal" >
</LinearLayout>
.
.
.

My my_first_activity.xml looks like this:

<RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="match_parent" >

    <TextView
        android:layout_width="wrap_content"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:layout_centerHorizontal="true"
        android:layout_centerVertical="true"
        android:padding="@dimen/padding_medium"
        android:text="@string/hello_world"
        tools:context=".MyFirstActivity" />

</RelativeLayout>

Answer 1

Yeah, the documentation is a little old. You’ve got it right; they’re the same file, with different names. You can safely rename it to main.xml if it makes you feel better.

You’ve picked the setting that creates a “hello world” text view by default, so it went ahead and created that TextView for you.

If you want, you can replace the RelativeLayout with LinearLayout to follow the tutorial. I don’t think the part works in the new ADT.