The Strings File

The strings.xml file is located in the res/values folder and it contains all the text that your application uses. For example, the names of buttons, labels, default text, and similar types of strings go into this file. This file is responsible for their textual content. For example, a default strings file will look like as following file −

<resources>
   <string name="app_name">HelloWorld</string>
   <string name="hello_world">Hello world!</string>
   <string name="menu_settings">Settings</string>
   <string name="title_activity_main">MainActivity</string>
</resources>

The Layout File

The activity_main.xml is a layout file available in res/layout directory, that is referenced by your application when building its interface. You will modify this file very frequently to change the layout of your application. For your "Hello World!" application, this file will have following content related to default layout −

<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=".MainActivity" />
      
</RelativeLayout>

This is an example of simple RelativeLayout which we will study in a separate chapter. The TextView is an Android control used to build the GUI and it have various attributes like android:layout_width, android:layout_height etc which are being used to set its width and height etc.. The @string refers to the strings.xml file located in the res/values folder. Hence, @string/hello_world refers to the hello string defined in the strings.xml file, which is "Hello World!".