Android Studio: Add jar as library?

Question

I'm trying to use the new Android Studio but I can't seem to get it working correctly.

I'm using the Gson library to serialize/deserialize JSON-objects. But the library somehow isn't included in the build.

I had created a new project with just a MainActivity. Copied gson-2.2.3.jar in the /libs folder and added it as a library dependancy(right click->Add as library). This includes the jar in android studio so it can be referenced from the source files.

When I try to run the project it cannot compile so I added:

compile files('libs/gson-2.2.3.jar')

to the dependencies in de .gradle file. After that it compiles correctly but when running the application I get a ClassDefNotFoundException.

Does anyone know what I'm doing wrong?

Answer 1

I've been struggling with the same thing for many hours, trying to get the Gson jar to work no less. I finally cracked it – here are the steps I took:

1. Put the Gson jar (in my case, gson-2.2.4.jar) into the libs folder
2. Right click it and hit 'Add as library'

3. Ensure that compile files('libs/gson-2.2.4.jar') is in your build.gradle file (or compile fileTree(dir: 'libs', include: '*.jar') if you are using many jar files)

   Edit : Use implementation files('libs/gson-2.2.4.jar') (or implementation fileTree(dir: 'libs', include: '*.jar')) in Android Studio 3.0+

4. Do a clean build (you can probably do this fine in Android Studio, but to make sure I navigated in a terminal to the root folder of my app and typed gradlew clean. I'm on Mac OS X, the command might be different on your system

After I did the above four, it started working fine. I think the 'Add as library' step was the one I'd previously missed, and it didn't work until I cleaned it either.

[Edit - added the build.gradle step which is also necessary as others have pointed out]