android themes – defining colours in custom themes

I found a solution which seems to work. First you need to define the custom color fields in attr.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<resources>

<attr name="titleColor" format="reference|color" />
<attr name="introColor" format="reference|color" />

</resources>

Next you define your themes

<style name="AppTheme.MyDark" parent="android:Theme">
   <item name="titleColor">#FFFFFF</item>
   <item name="introColor">#FFFFFF</item>
</style>


<style name="AppTheme.MyLight" parent="android:Theme">
   <item name="titleColor">#000000</item>
   <item name="introColor">#004444</item>
</style>

and finally in your layout

<TextView
    android:id="@+id/quoteTitle"
    android:textColor="?titleColor"
    ...
</TextView>

<TextView
    android:id="@+id/quoteIntro"
    android:textColor="?introColor"
    ...
</TextView>

i found the solution mainly here

There seems to be no explanation in the official android documentation about using attributes. Best resource I found is here