How to determine selected `configuration` in Android?

Question

In Android Studio I created two configurations:

How can I determine in code which configuration I selected?

I know that there is buildConfigField in /app/build.gradle but the names of the buildTypes do not correspond to the configuration names, so I wonder how does that all fit together.

android {
    ...

    defaultConfig {
        ...
    }
    buildTypes {
        debug {
            ...
            buildConfigField 'boolean', 'DEBUG', 'true'
        }
        release {
            ...
        }
    }
}

I assume that in Android Studio a configuration corresponds to a schema in Xcode and a buildConfigField corresponds to the Environment Variable in Xcode (me coming from iOS world).

"How can I determine in code which configuration I selected?" -- generally, you don't. A run configuration is an IDE thing, not an Android thing. If I had to guess, you are conflating run configurations ("what code or tests am I executing in this IDE?") with build variants (e.g., "is this `debug` or `release`?"). The latter is controlled via the Build Variants window, by default docked on the lower left side of the Android Studio window. — CommonsWare, Jan 05 '17 at 13:20
@CommonsWare I see, what I want is to define environment variable values that I can use in code, e.g. in a debug build variant I want to connect to the development database, in a release build variant I want to connect to the production database. — Manuel, Jan 05 '17 at 13:23
Have you read the [Configure Build Variants](https://developer.android.com/studio/build/build-variants.html) in the Android documentation? It describes how to use flavors which is the common way to switch between productive and dev environment. — Robert, Jan 05 '17 at 13:26

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Jan 05 '17 at 13:20

You can configure different resource sets. By default main and debug already exist. To determine at runtime which set was used to build the apk create a new resource file in each resource set, e.g.

app/src/main/res/values/resourceset.xml and app/src/debug/res/values/resourceset.xml

and place a single string or integer value inside like this:

<resources>
     <string name="resource_set">debug</string>
</resources>

and

<resources>
     <string name="resource_set">main</string>
</resources>

You may then use getString() to get the value for R.string.resource_set and you can detect which resource set was used.

I am using this technique to include different Google API client IDs depending on the resource set that was used (to enable debugging with Google APIs and release with another fingerprint then debug).

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 05 '17 at 13:31

How can I determine in code which configuration I selected?

You don't, insofar as a run configuration is an IDE thing, not an Android thing.

what I want is to define environment variable values that I can use in code, e.g. in a debug build variant I want to connect to the development database, in a release build variant I want to connect to the production database

None of that has anything to do with run configurations. Run configurations are for configuring what is to be run:

the main app
tests for the main app
tests for the something library
etc.

debug versus release are build types, one dimension of the build variant. You choose which build variant the run configurations use via the Build Variants tool, docked by default on the lower-left side of the Android Studio IDE window.

To have different code behavior based upon debug versus release, you can:

Examine BuildConfig.BUILD_TYPE, which will be either debug or release
Use buildConfigField to inject values into BuildConfig from Gradle, based upon build type and/or product flavor
Use resConfig to inject values into resources, such as string resources
Use custom source sets per build type (e.g., src/main/ for your common code, src/debug/ for debug-specific code, src/release/ for release-specific code)

How to determine selected `configuration` in Android?

2 Answers2