<meta-data>

syntax:

<meta-data android:name="string"
           android:resource="resource specification"
           android:value="string" />

contained in:

<activity>
<activity-alias>
<application>
<provider>
<receiver>
<service>

description:

A name-value pair for an item of additional, arbitrary data that can be supplied to the parent component. A component element can contain any number of <meta-data> subelements. The values from all of them are collected in a single Bundle object and made available to the component as the PackageItemInfo.metaData field.

Specify ordinary values through the value attribute. To assign a resource ID as the value, use the resource attribute instead. For example, the following code assigns whatever value is stored in the @string/kangaroo resource to the zoo name:

<meta-data android:name="zoo" android:value="@string/kangaroo" />

On the other hand, using the resource attribute assigns zoo the numeric ID of the resource, not the value stored in the resource:

<meta-data android:name="zoo" android:resource="@string/kangaroo" />

We highly recommend that you avoid supplying related data as multiple separate <meta-data> entries. Instead, if you have complex data to associate with a component, store it as a resource and use the resource attribute to inform the component of its ID.

attributes:

android:name

A unique name for the item. To keep the name unique, use a Java-style naming convention, such as "com.example.project.activity.fred".

android:resource

A reference to a resource. The ID of the resource is the value assigned to the item. The ID is retrieved from the meta-data Bundle using the Bundle.getInt() method.

android:value

The value assigned to the item. The data types that can be assigned as values and the Bundle methods that components use to retrieve those values are listed in the following table:

Type	Bundle method
String: use double backslashes (\\) to escape characters, such as \\n for a new line and \\uxxxxx for a Unicode character	getString()
Integer: for example, 100	getInt()
Boolean: either true or false	getBoolean()
Color: in the form #rgb, #argb, #rrggbb, or #aarrggbb	getInt()
Float: for example, 1.23	getFloat()

introduced in:

API level 1