How can I access a BuildConfig value in my AndroidManifest.xml file?

Question

Is it possible to access a BuildConfig value from AndroidManifest.xml?

In my build.gradle file, I have:

defaultConfig {
    applicationId "com.compagny.product"
    minSdkVersion 16
    targetSdkVersion 21
    versionCode 1
    versionName "1.0"

    // Facebook app id
    buildConfigField "long", "FACEBOOK_APP_ID", FACEBOOK_APP_ID
}

FACEBOOK_APP_ID is defined in my gradle.properties files:

# Facebook identifier (app ID)
FACEBOOK_APP_ID=XXXXXXXXXX

To use Facebook connect in my app, I must add this line to my AndroidManifest.xml:

<meta-data android:name="com.facebook.sdk.ApplicationId" android:value="@string/applicationId"/> 

I want to replace @string/applicationId by the BuildConfig field FACEBOOK_APP_ID defined in gradle, like this:

<meta-data android:name="com.facebook.sdk.ApplicationId" android:value="FACEBOOK_APP_ID"/> 

Is that possible using BuildConfig? If not, how can I achieve this?

Answer 1

Replace

buildConfigField "long", "FACEBOOK_APP_ID", FACEBOOK_APP_ID

with

resValue "string", "FACEBOOK_APP_ID", FACEBOOK_APP_ID

then rebuild your project (Android Studio -> Build -> Rebuild Project).

The two commands both produce generated values - consisting of Java constants in the first case, and Android resources in the second - during project builds, but the second method will generate a string resource value that can be accessed using the @string/FACEBOOK_APP_ID syntax. This means it can be used in the manifest as well as in code.