The resource compiler auto-generates a Monkey C module named Rez that contains the resource IDs for the resource file. These identifiers, of type Lang.ResourceId, are used to refer to your resources:

The code can use the Rez class to reference the resources at run time. You can use the following APIs:

For example, let's say you have a bitmap you want to use in your view. Before it can be used by the app, it must be loaded from the resource file:

image = Application.loadResource( Rez.Drawables.bitmap_id ) as BitmapResource;

Now the bitmap can be drawn in the update handler:

dc.drawBitmap( 50, 50, image );

Resources are reference counted just like other Monkey C objects. Loading a resource can be an expensive operation, so do not load resources when handling screen updates.

Since API level 3.1.0

Adding resources to an app comes with a minor runtime memory cost. While the cost is small, it can seriously cut into the available memory for background services and glances. To mitigate these costs, Connect IQ has an additional scope attribute to the following resource tags: <layout>, <drawable-list>, <bitmap>, <string>, <font>, <jsonData>. The scope attribute tells the resource compiler the type of application that the resource should be made available to. Valid values for the scope attribute are background, glance, and foreground. If the attribute is not specified for a resource, it will be considered part of the foreground scope by default. An example of using the scope attribute with string resources:

<resources xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="http://developer.garmin.com/downloads/connect-iq/resources.xsd">
    <string id="MyBackgroundString" scope="background">Background String</string>
    <string id="MyGlanceString" scope="glance">Glance String</string>
    <string id="MyForegroundString" scope="foreground">Foreground String</string>
</resources>

Use the scope attribute to save memory in your glance or background service. All background scoped resources will be available to the glance and foreground application. All glance scoped resources will be available to the foreground application, but not to the background service. Foreground scoped resources will only be available to the foreground application.

In the example above, MyBackgroundString would be available when running the application in any valid mode. MyGlanceString would be available to the glance and foreground application, but not to the background service if present. MyForegroundString would only be available to the foreground application. By providing this hierarchy, developers can better determine how their resources should be scoped.

See Background Services or Glances for more information.

Connect IQ products are used around the world, and those users want apps to work in their language. Connect IQ supports adding strings using a strings resource file:

<strings>
    <string id="identifier">String Value</string>
</strings>

At runtime, you can load this string using loadResource(). String definitions take the following attributes:

Using localization qualifiers of your resource folders you can provide different strings for different languages. Adding the following suffixes to your resource folder will allow you to add string files for various languages

You can combine these qualifiers with device, family and screen qualifiers to have strings that are customized to each device if necessary.

See the Strings sample for an example of how to use the strings resource system.

Garmin devices have different form factors, screen sizes and screen technologies, so bitmaps need to be explicitly converted for every device. The resource compiler will generate resources for every intended product, which allows the developer to have one set of resources for black and white products, one set for color products, one for larger screen sizes, etc. The resource compiler supports JPG/JPEG, BMP/WBMP, GIF, SVG and PNG file formats.

While each device has a unique palette, the developer can specify a palette to use for an image. The resource compiler will map the colors that are defined in the developer's palette to the closest match in the device palette and use only those colors. A palette can be defined using the following syntax:

<resources xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="http://developer.garmin.com/downloads/connect-iq/resources.xsd">
    <bitmap id="bitmap_id" filename="path/for/image">
        <palette disableTransparency="false">
            <color>FF0000</color>
            <color>FFFFFF</color>
            <color>0000FF</color>
        </palette>
    </bitmap>
</resources>

The table below shows some of the valid attributes for a <bitmap> definition.

The valid attributes for a <palette> definition are in the table below.

The resource compiler reads fonts in TXT or PNG format. You can use the BMFont tool (available at http://www.angelcode.com/products/bmfont/) to convert a font from many different formats to a compatible format. Prior to export, ensure that BMFont's Font Settings specify the Unicode character set. Recommended export options are shown in the image below:

The color can be set using Dc.setColor(). Since bitmap fonts can take a lot of runtime memory, the font converter defaults to non-anti-aliased 1-bit fonts to save memory. If you know you will have the runtime RAM available, you can turn on font anti-aliasing with the antialias option.

<!-- Domo arigato mister font -->
<font id="font_id" filename="roboto.fnt" antialias="true" />

If you are creating a large font, sometimes, only particular glyphs need to be large-sized (like numbers for a watch face). Use the filter attribute to specify the particular glyphs to include:

<!-- Only include digits from this large font -->
<font id="font_id" filename="big_font.fnt" filter="0123456789:"/>

Font elements accept the following attributes:

Menus are common UI elements on Connect IQ products. Menu resources allow you to define your menus within your resource definitions.

Since API level 3.1.0

The Monkey Motion tool included in the Connect IQ SDK that can be used to generate animation resources for compatible Connect IQ products.

The Monkey Motion tool supports importing from YUV and GIF file formats. Due the fact that YUV is a true color, close-to-raw file format, it is the recommended format when entering a high quality animation into the Monkey Motion encoder tool. If necessary, FFmpeg is a convenient tool for converting video file formats. For example, if your creative team has provided a video in some other popular format, convert the file to the YUV format:

> ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vf format=yuv420p output.y4m

Additionally, to overcome the fact that the YUV format does not support transparency (unlike the GIF file format), the Monkey Motion tool accepts an additional YUV file as input. This video file should represent an alpha channel mask of the original animation that contained transparency. Again, FFmpeg is a convenient tool for creating such a video. The alphaextract option can be used to take an input stream with an alpha channel and return a video containing just the alpha component as a greyscale value:

> ffmpeg -i input.gif -vf alphaextract,format=yuv420p output.y4m

For the same reasons outlined in the section above, animations need to be explicitly converted for every device. For easy import into your Connect IQ application, the Monkey Motion tool batch converts video to binary encoding³ for devices you select.

JSON data resources can store relatively large amounts of data in your app without having to keep it in memory at all times. This can be useful for storing something like a table of information that must be referenced at runtime, but will not be modified.

These resources are declared with the jsonData tag in a resource file, are read by the resource compiler, and loaded on demand at runtime. The jsonData tag supports the following attributes:

JSON data resources may be provided as either a jsonData value or as a file referenced by the filename attribute, depending on whether it's easier to manage the data inside a resource file or in a separate JSON file. If using a file, it may only contain JSON data. Here are a few examples:

<resources xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="http://developer.garmin.com/downloads/connect-iq/resources.xsd">
    <jsonData id="jsonDictionary">{"key":"value", "3":"three", "three":3}</jsonData>
    <jsonData id="jsonArray">[1,2,3,4,5,6]</jsonData>
    <jsonData id="jsonMix">[1,{"1":"one"},["a","b","c"]]</jsonData>
    <jsonData id="jsonPrimitive">5</jsonData>
    <jsonData id="jsonFile" filename="data.json"/>
</resources>

The JSON data is loaded with the Application.loadResource() method by passing in the jsonData ID. For example, to load the jsonArray data from the example above, the following code would be used:

var array = Application.loadResource(Rez.JsonData.jsonArray);

For more see the JsonDataResources sample app distributed with the SDK.