Is it possible to use an arbitrary name for an XML resource file in Android Studio?

Issue

I'm attempting to create a 'Preferences' Activity for my Wear OS app (home-baked as I don't believe the standard Settings Activity copes with round screens).

In order to support the round screen I am planning to use a WearableRecyclerView and so need to define string-arrays for the contents of the Recycler layouts.

To keep things clean in my code, I'd like to keep these string-arrays out of my strings.xml files if possible.

Therefore, is it possible to use, for example, preferences.xml in the res/values folder (and provide translations in the values-?? folders) and then reference this in code?

I have tried creating preferences.xml but when I try to retrieve the arrays with

String[] prefsTitlesArray = getResources().getStringArray(R.preferences.prefs_titles);

I get an error flagged in the IDE as 'preferences' isn't recognised under R.

Do I have to stick to the standard .xml file names such as strings.xml and array.xml or is it possible to use an arbitrary file name under the values tree to keep thinsg nice and clean and obviously named?

(Note, I have looked at Is it possible to create translateable arbitrary XML resources in Android Studio? which seems to imply that arbitrary xml file names might be possible outside of the values tree, but doesn't mention how they are referenced in code (Java, in my case).

Solution

As per Mike M's comment, yes it is possible to name the XML resource files anything you want as the code reference R.????.itemName is derived from the item type not the file it comes from.

So a file called prefs.xml could contain <string name="itemName"> items and <string-array name="itemName"> items etc and they will be referenced from code as R.string.itemName and R.array.itemName.

The XML filename itself is irrelevant so long as it is saved in the correct folder within the project for value resource files.

Answered By - Fat Monk