Multiple resource folders in Android

Android resource organization system is controversial.

It sets clear boundaries between code and resources, such as images or layouts. But on the other hand, these 2 are closely related in some cases, especially the Activities/Fragments with their layouts.

And having those so far apart makes it hard, especially in large projects. When you are working on a class and you want to create a helper class, you place those 2 close together (usually in the same package) because they share the same "context". But you cannot do the same with resource files, because only a single resource folder exists and everything must be placed there.

Actually, there is a way to have multiple resource folders in an Android project. You just need to declare them in your module's build.gradle file.

android {
    [...]
    sourceSets {
        main.res.srcDirs += [
                'src/main/java/your/package/name/res',
                [...]
        ]
    }
}

You can have as many as you want. Just add a new line for each new resource folder. In the defined root res folders you can have multiple subfolders depending on the type of resources you have (e.g. only having res/layout if you only have layouts).

In the above example, we are appending (+=) the new resource folders to the existing main one. You can remove the main one by just setting ( =) instead.

The main use-case I use this approach is to have all the relevant resources for a screen close together. So each screen has its own package, and for each screen package a dedicated resource folder.

I hope I made your Android development life a bit easier!