Obfuscate R.id class with or without proguard

Issue

I know in Proguard you are recommended to keep the fields names of the R inner classes like ID. Because ProGuard doesn't handle the layout xml files. You will end up with broken links

But is there away to obfuscate classes like R$id by some other means, even if it involves doing it before passing it to ProGuard, via Ant.

I am asking this because if you have a button with an id btnSaveArticle, for a hacker it becomes too easy to grasp what the code around is doing by looking at the name.

Could it be possible to copy all the source code, including the resource files to another folder and use ant to run regex to change the names of the R.ids as well as changing where they appear in the layout xml files, and then somehow running generate to re-create the R classes?

Or you could create translation class eg TR then map it to the fields in the R.class

eg.

TR.btnSaveArticle = R.id.DHTXM; 

Where DHTXM is some meaning less word that can be used in the layout XML. But in the code you always refer to TR.btnSaveArticle, which will be obfuscated by proguard.

Are there ways to achieve this or am I wasting my time?

Solution

It is possible through Ant, as it allows you to set a different gen and res folder.

So what you do is copy from the originals to those folders and then you edit the files using regex to update to the new names.

You will need a translation class (eg D) like this to map it to the fields in the R.class, so in your code you can work with non obfuscated names.

public final class D{
  public static final class id{
    D.btnSaveArticle = R.id.btnSaveArticle //DHTXM; 

Then you also need to create a different src folder and copy from the original folder. There you run a task to edit the D class so it becomes

   D.btnSaveArticle = R.id.DHTXM;

I had to create a java program which is run through ant to swap the names to obfuscated names.

If you do something similar for strings, and styles your XML in the apk would end up looking like this:

<TextView
        android:id="@+id/GnvCMa"
        android:text="@string/OVuCbd"
        style="@style/ZOVkuu.MGTRgZ" />

It is a little time consuming to setup, but once implemented it can be used for other projects.

Answered By - pt123