Activities and Intents Tutorial: Manifest

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Manifest: Definition

Before we cover the key concepts of Activity and Intent, it’s important to understand one key aspect of an Android application – the manifest file (AndroidManifest.xml). This file is present in the root folder for every Android application and it provides the following information. We co-relate the information in Manifest file to the Hello World application developed as part of Module 1

  • Package Name – In Hello World app, this was set to com.learncomputer
  • Version – By default, it’s set to 1.0
  • Minimum SDK Version – Specifies the Google API level, in our case, we set it to 2.3.3 (API Level 10)
  • Resources including the launcher icon and the application name
  • List of Activities (MAIN), category (LAUNCHER) and the relevant intent filters. We’ll discuss these at length in the subsequent sections of this module.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<manifest xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    package="com.learncomputer"
    android:versionCode="1"
    android:versionName="1.0" >
    <uses-sdk android:minSdkVersion="10" />
    <application
        android:icon="@drawable/ic_launcher"
        android:label="@string/app_name" >
        <activity
            android:label="@string/app_name"
            android:name=".HelloWorldActivity" >
            <intent-filter >
             <action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN" />
       <category 
android:name="android.intent.category.LAUNCHER"/>
            </intent-filter>
        </activity>
    </application>
</manifest>
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