MANIFEST FILE

2.6 MANIFEST FILE

            Before the Android system can start an application component, the system must know that the component exists by reading the applications AndroidManifest.xml file(the “manifest” file). Your application must declare all its components in this file, which must be at the root of the application project directory.

            The manifest does a number of things in addition to declaring the applications components, such as

·         Identify any user permissions the application requires, such as Internet access or read-access to the user’s contacts.

·         Declare the minimum API level required by the application, based on which APIs the application uses.

·         Declare hardware and software features used or required by the application, such as Camera, Bluetooth service or a multi touch screen.

·         API libraries the application needs to be linked against other than the Android framework APIs, such as the Google Maps Library.

Example,

<?xml version= "1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <manifest ... >     <application android:icon= "@drawable/app_icon.png" ... >         <activity android:name= "com.example.project.ExampleActivity"                   android:label= "@string/example_label" ... >         </activity>         ...     </application> </manifest>

In the <application> element, the android:icon attribute points to resources for an icon that identifies the application.

You must declare all application components this way,

• <activity>  elements for activities.
• <service>   elements for services.
• <receiver> elements for broadcast receivers.
• <provider> elements for content providers.

Activities, services, and content providers that you include in your source but do not declare in the manifest are not visible to the system and, consequently, can never run. However, broadcast receivers can be either declared in the manifest or created dynamically in code (as BroadcastReceiver objects) and registered with the system by calling registerReceiver().