CODEWITHSUNDEEP
androidandroid-studiogradle
Gary Sheppard
Gary Sheppard

Reputation: 4932

How to copy resources files from other directory into Android project during sync or build?

The question

When you need to use resource files, such as images, in your Android project, typically you put them in the res directory (e.g. res/drawable), and the Android build process picks them up by default. But what if your resource files come from a directory outside of your Android project? How do you copy them into a folder like res/drawable during sync or build?

What I have tried

I have a feeling that the solution is to write Gradle code, but I'm not sure how to do it. I tried the following code in my app module build.gradle file:

task copyResources(type: Copy) {
    from '../../../images'
    into 'res/drawable'
}

But it did not copy anything as far as I can tell. This is probably just my ignorance of how to use Gradle, and I could use some help.

I realize I could manually copy from ../../../images to res/drawable, but let's say those files change often, and I want to get the current version automatically whenever I sync or maybe whenever I build. If this is possible, I would appreciate knowing how to do it. If it is not possible, I would like to know that as well.

Upvotes: 2

Views: 2787

Answers (2)

Toris
Toris

Reputation: 2376

See How to run copy task with android studio into assets folder

Can do with adding

preBuild.dependsOn copyResources

after task copyResources(){...} in your build.gradle.

But, it's not a good way for copying resources.

Upvotes: 2

Jeffrey Blattman
Jeffrey Blattman

Reputation: 22637

Generally you don't want to do that. The reason is that it makes what would otherwise be a clean source control system confused by the copied files.

A better idea would be to build an Android library (AAR) housed in a separate project, then consume them by adding that AAR as a dependency to the parent project.

Upvotes: 2

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