Extracting Android .apk and reading contents of XML file in res/layout

Question

I am trying to reverse engineer an existing android app and understand how a particular UI is constructed. I've found that I can rename the apk to zip and view some of the compiled source. The res/layout directory is populated with all the xml files that define the UI, but while they do have the xml extension, they are not in XML format. Is there anyway to convert these files back to text based markup?

Answer 1

First covert your .apk to .zip . Inside that you will get a compiled-bundled version of java class files called .dex. apply the below trick to convert that dex to class files

There's a way to do this. A slight atypical way is to download this opensource tool dextozar http://code.google.com/p/dex2jar/

This will convert your dex files to Jar file. Unzar these files to get java class files.

Then reverse engineer the java class files to get the java code. Don't use it to break some commercial projects.

Thanks

Answer 2

i think you can use http://code.google.com/p/android-apktool/ , The xml files looks very well