Android: Copy resource files in the correct folder

[GitToTheHub]

Bug Report

I want to copy resources to the res directory of the android app.

Problem

I followed the documentation for the resource-file tag of the config.xml, where it shows an example to copy a resource file to res/values/ for Android:

<resource-file src="FooPluginStrings.xml" target="res/values/FooPluginStrings.xml" />

When I use this code, the resource file gets copied to platforms/android/res/values, but the correct folder would be platforms/android/app/src/main/res/values.

When I do the same for iOS with

<platform name="ios">
    <resource-file src="FooPluginStrings.xml" target="FooPluginStrings.xml" />
</platform>

It gets correctly copied to platforms/iOS/[AppName]/Resources (using cordova-ios 7.1.1).

Should there be not a similar behavior for Android? Must the documentation be updated to the correct path, or is this an issue in the Cordova-cli?

What is expected to happen?

The resource file should be put in the correct folder like the documentation says.

What does actually happen?

The resource file is copied in the wrong place.

Information

Command or Code

Environment, Platform, Device

Version information

• macOS 15.2
• MacBook Pro 2019 13"
• cordova-cli 12.0.0 ([email protected])

Checklist

• I searched for existing GitHub issues
• I updated all Cordova tooling to most recent version
• I included all the necessary information above

[dpogue]

There's some history here that's worth knowing. The Android platform moved from being an Eclipse (ant) project to being an Android Studio (gradle) project, and the project structure changed. Previously, res was a top-level folder, but now it's nested under app/src/main.

To avoid breaking all the existing plugins, there's a remapping system in cordova-android that will take "old" paths and rewrite them to the newer paths. That remapping appears to be used unconditionally resource-file in plugins, but not for resource-file declarations in config.xml.

The workaround is to specify the full path that you want for the file, i.e. app/src/main/res/values/FooPluginStrings.xml

It's not feasible to automatically prefix all resource files with app/src/main (which is what plugins are doing) because that prevents app authors from doing something like copying a google-service.json file into the app folder.
Maybe we could add a check for target paths that start with res/ and remap those?

[GitToTheHub]

I understand. On my opinion checking for res/ would be good, than it would be also backward compatible. The app developer should not care about the real res path, because the path can also change in future changes.

[breautek]

When I use this code, the resource file gets copied to platforms/android/res/values,

Android has a concept of build variants so i don't think it's a good idea to auto prefix and assume app/src/main.

app here is the module name, and main is the build type. Complex projects could make use of these.

So I think we should consider this a doc issue.

[GitToTheHub]

Thank you @breautek, I didn't know about this. Could this path nevertheless automatically calculated for build variants? Is it really needed do decide in which build variant a resource file will be copied? Does cordova-android support build variants anyway?