How to add external libraries to Android Project in Android Studio?
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This document is based on:
-
Android Studio 3.6.1
You are developing an Android app on Android Studio, sometimes you want to use an external library for your project, such as a jar file.

Common langs is an java library with open source code which is provided by the Apache, it has utility methods for working with String, numbers, concurrency ...
- Download: commons-lang3-3.10.jar
Suppose that you want to use this library for your Android project. And using one of its utility methods to test whether a String is a number or not.
import org.apache.commons.lang3.StringUtils; public class CheckNumeric { public void test() { String text1 = "0123a4"; String text2 = "01234"; boolean result1 = StringUtils.isNumeric(text1); boolean result2 = StringUtils.isNumeric(text2); System.out.println(text1 + " is a numeric? " + result1); System.out.println(text2 + " is a numeric? " + result2); } }
In this document I will guide you 3 ways to use the external library:
- Add your jar files to libs folder of the project and declare it as a library to use.
- Create a Android module and copy your jar file to this module, and then declare your project using the newly created module.
- Declare and use a remote library.
Create a project named AddLibsDemo:

OK, your project has been created.

Change to Project tab:

Copy jar file to libs folder:


Right click jar files, select "Add as Library..":


Turn back to "Android" Tab, you can see that your library has been already declared in build.grade (Module: app)

OK, now your library is being already used.
Suppose you have a AddLibsDemo2 project, you want to use common-lang3-3.4.jar library for this project.

Create a Android Module:


Point to the location of the library.

Module library has been created:

Next, you need to declare the dependency of the main project into the newly created module.
- File/Project Structure


Add module dependencies:



You can check your module which has been declared in build.grade (Module: app).

Android Studio can use the library on a network, it is located in some repository on the Internet. Suppose you have AddLibDemo3 project, and you need to add the remote library to your project.




Search the library:


OK, the library has been added to the project, you can see on build.grade (Module: app).
