Creating styles-v21.xml

Question

In Android Studio, I imported a project which did not include styles.xml (v21). So I created a styles-v21.xml file in the values directory. Both styles.xml and styles-v21.xml are in the values directory now.

styles.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<resources>

    <style name="AppTheme" parent="AppTheme.Base">
        <!-- Customize your theme here. -->
    </style>

    <style name="AppTheme.Base" parent="Theme.AppCompat.Light">

    </style>

</resources>

styles-v21.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<resources>
    <style name="AppTheme" parent="android:Theme.Material.Light.DarkActionBar">

    </style>

</resources>

When I build the project I get a build error:

Error:Error: Duplicate resources: C:\xxx\main\res\values\styles-v21.xml:style/AppTheme, C:\xxx\main\res\values\styles.xml:style/AppTheme

The error is that both resource files have the same style name: AppTheme. But in other projects and tutorials I've seen, these styles have the same name. One is for Android with version 21 compatibility and the other is for Android without the compatibility.

I guess I want to know if I should simply change the name or if these files are supposed to have the same name - which means there is a bigger problem at hand. How should I proceed?

Solution 1

Right click on res folder, choose New --> Android resource file, set the same name for the new file "styles", in Available qualifiers: choose the last item "Version" and finally set "Platform API level" 21.

Solution 2

By default, Android Studio doesn't create styles.xml (v21). What you need to do is create a folder structure like the following:

• res/values/styles.xml
• res/values-v21/styles.xml

And this is what you will get in Android Studio:

Then you can defined different AppTheme for different API levels.

Solution 3

You should create styles.xml for version 21 in values-v21 folder and android studio automatically add it as styles.xml(v21)

Comments

[650aa6a2]

Can I delete the general styles.xml if I'm only targeting 21+?

[Yuchen]

@pfdint You don't have to keep the res/values-v21/styles.xml if you only target 21+. You can keep the generic one.