What Is the Role of Content_Main.Xml in Android Studio 1.4

What is the role of content_main.xml in android studio 1.4?

According to new design pattern in android studio activity_main.xml will determine how the global UI of the Activity should be. And on the other hand content_main.xml will determine the contents in the activity_main.xml.

That is content_main.xml will contain the textview, edittext, button etc component. And it will be included by the activity_main.xml.

So we can think of content_main.xml just like partial in HTML. activity_main.xml will contain your activity global design, and content_main.xml will contain the contents.

From view of what they contain:

activity_main : Co-ordinator layout, ViewPager etc

content_main : Developer choosen elements. textview, edittext, button etc.

What the android developer website says about them is

activity_main:

This XML layout file is for the activity you added when you created
the project with Android Studio. Following the New Project workflow,
Android Studio presents this file with both a text view and a preview
of the screen UI. The file contains some default interface elements
from the material design library, including the app bar and a floating
action button. It also includes a separate layout file with the main
content

content_main:

This XML layout file resides in activity_my.xml (activity_main) ,
and contains some settings and Textview(other) element.

Benifits of content_main.xml in android studio 1.4 & later versions

Anroid Studio auto generates the files from 1.4+

content_main.xml is layout (you can name it anything). It contains the contents of your layout apart from app bar and sliding appbar and fab(floating action bar)

You don't really need it. If you don't want android studio to auto generate it for you. Try choosing Empty Activity.

why is there content_main.xml and activity_main.xml by default instead of just activity_main.xml?

The modern Android approach is based on Fragments, which are, in a way, "small Activities", which you can put in Activities, gaining lots of flexibility.

Therefore, activity_main.xml is simply the Activity layout containing a container (FrameLayout most probably) and content_main.xml is the layout for a Fragment put into this container somewhere within MainActivity.java. You should study the code in there to understand it better :)

Content_main.xml missing

content_main.xml file will be generated when you choose "blank activity" . This activity will be having floating button by default at the bottom of the screen.

But when you choose "empty activty" then content_main.xml won't be generated and it won't be having floating button , but just simple activity.

So for your tutorial choose "blank activity" and then your tutorial will run fine

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