How to add a jar in External Libraries in android studio

Question

I am new to Android Studio. What I need to do is add a few jar files in the External Libraries below the < JDK > folder.

Answer 1

The "official way" to add a jar into your android project as an external library, is to add the jar in dependencies { } section in build.gradle.

If you've done all of the above, and none of the above works, then there are two other possibilities:

1. If Android Studio or some other IDE doesn't give red underlined errors in editor but runs in error in the Java Compiler, CHECK YOUR JAR. Your jar may not have a proper Manifest included therefore the compiler doesn't know what the jar can provide/don't know it's package name
2. Maybe it's folder structure is messed up. The folder structure doesn't match with its package name. package a.b.c; should be matching to folder a > folder b > folder c.
3. The package name has some conflict. (Trust me, this happened to me and it took hours to figure it out.)

---

However, if you are going with cordova, here are some tips of adding external jars.

"build-extras.gradle" is the better way to manage your gradle file.

Here are the steps to manage extra settings in cordova-based android project:

1. Adding your jar into build-extras.gradle:

   //Other settings go here, e.g.: buildscript { ... }
   ext.postBuildExtras = {
   // you may have some other settings, e.g.: android { ... }
           dependencies {
                   compile files('libs/abc.jar')
           }
   }
   

(More detailed steps here: Extending the cordova gradle file to include google services )

2. In terminal, do:

cordova build android