Android how read file

Android how read file

Android supports all the standard Java file I/O APIs for create, read, update, and delete (CRUD) operations, along with some additional helpers to make accessing those files in specific locations a little more convenient. There are three main locations in which an application can work with files:

• Internal storage. Protected directory space to read and write file data. Internal storage is always located in the device’s flash memory area — part of the 8 GB or 32 GB of «storage» that your device was advertised with—under /data/data/PKG_NAME/.
• External storage. Externally mountable space to read and write file data. Requires the WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE permission in API Level 4+. Often, this is a physical SD card in the device.
• Assets. Protected read-only space inside the APK bundle. Good for local resources that can’t or shouldn’t be compiled.

However, there are several complications.

First, some devices don’t have removable storage. On these, the external storage directory always exists—it is just in a different partition of the same flash memory storage as internal storage.

Second, on devices that do have removable storage, the storage might be removed at the time your application checks it. There’s no point trying to write it if it’s not there.

Read from res directory

If your application requires external file resources, you can include them in your distribution package by placing them in the res/raw folder of your project hierarchy.

To access these read-only file resources, call the openRawResource method from your application’s Resource object to receive an InputStream based on the specified file. Pass in the filename (without the extension) as the variable name from the R.raw class, as shown in the following code

Read from assets directory

Android offers one more directory where you can keep files which also will be included in package. This directory called /assets. There are some difference from res directory.

With resources, there’s built-in support for providing alternatives for different languages, OS versions, screen orientations, etc., as described here. None of that is available with assets. Also, many parts of the API support the use of resource identifiers. Finally, the names of the resources are turned into constant field names that are checked at compile time, so there’s less of an opportunity for mismatches between the code and the resources themselves. None of that applies to assets.source

Read/Write to Internal Storage

This area of storage is sort of private to the application. It is always available to the application and gets purged when the app is uninstalled by the user.

Internal storage refers to the hard drive on device. Internal storage gives you the ability to prevent other applications from accessing the files you save and are tied directly to your app.

Files stored in /data/data/packagename/files/filename.txt. There are few modes for file access

• MODE_PRIVATE — create a new file or overwrite one if it already exists with the same name
• MODE_APPEND — create the file if it doesn’t exist and allow you to append to the file if it does exist
• MODE_WORLD_READABLE — file is readable by any other application
• MODE_WORLD_WRITEABLE — file is writeable by any other application

Internal storage can be accessed using the Context methods openFileInput(String filename) , which returns a FileInputStream object, or openFileOutput(String filename, int mode) , which returns a FileOutputStream .

Write to file in internal storage

Read from file in internal storage

The Context method getFilesDir() returns the root of this directory, and you can then access it using normal java.io methods and classes.

Data is written to the file streams as bytes, so higher-level data (even strings) must be converted into and out of this format.

Following is a method to save an image to internal storage in Kotlin

Read/Write to SDCard

The key differentiator between internal and external storage is that external storage is mountable. This means that the user can connect his or her device to a computer and have the option of mounting that external storage as a removable disk on the PC. Often, the storage itself is physically removable (such as an SD card), but this is not a requirement of the platform.

External storage is typically either a removable storage media (i.e. SD Card) or an internal non-removable storage that is accessed in the same manner.

The most important thing to remember when storing files on external storage is that no security is enforced on files stored here. Any application can access, overwrite, or delete files stored on the external storage.

In order to write data to SDCard, the application need permission WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE, which can be specified in the file AndroidManifest.xml.

Check external storage

Write to SDCard

Read from SDCard

Following is a method to save an image to external storage in Kotlin

Read/Write to Cache

Should your application need to cache temporary files, Android offers both a managed internal cache, and (since Android API level 8) an unmanaged external cache. You can access them by calling the getCacheDir and getExternalCacheDir methods, respectively, from the current Context.

Files stored in either cache location will be erased when the application is uninstalled. Files stored in the internal cache will potentially be erased by the system when it is running low on available storage; files stored on the external cache will not be erased, as the system does not track available storage on external media.

Read from cache dir

Write to cache dir

Read/Write to publicly readable files

Android 2.2 (API level 8) includes a convenience method, Environment.getExternalStoragePublicDirectory , that can be used to find a path in which to store your application files. The returned location is where users will typically place and manage their own files of each type. Files that’ll remain on the storage even after the application is uninstalled by the user like media (photos, videos, etc.) or other downloaded files. This is particularly useful for applications that provide functionality that replaces or augments system applications, such as the camera, that store files in standard locations.

There are 2 methods that we can use to get the public external storage directory for placing files:

• getExternalStorageDirectory() method returns the primary (top-level or root) external storage directory.
• getExternalStoragePublicDirectorty method returns a top level public external storage directory for showing files of a particular type based on the argument passed. So basically the external storage has directories like Music, Podcasts, Pictures, etc. whose paths can be determined and returned via this function by passing the appropriate environment constants.

The getExternalStoragePublicDirectory method accepts a string parameter that determines which subdirectory you want to access using a series of Environment static constants:

• DIRECTORY_DCIM — pictures and videos taken by the device
• DIRECTORY_DOWNLOADS — files downloaded by the user
• DIRECTORY_MOVIES — movies
• DIRECTORY_MUSIC — audio fi les that represent music
• DIRECTORY_PICTURES — pictures

Note that if the returned directory doesn’t exit, you must create it before writing fi les to the directory, as shown in the following snippet

External System Directories

There are additional methods in Environment and Context that provide standard locations on external storage where specific files can be written. Some of these locations have additional properties as well.

• API Level 8
• Returns a common directory where all applications store media files. The contents of these directories are visible to users and other applications. In particular, the media placed here will likely be scanned and inserted into the device’s MediaStore for applications such as the Gallery.
• Valid type values include DIRECTORY_PICTURES , DIRECTORY_MUSIC , DIRECTORY_MOVIES , and DIRECTORY_RINGTONES .

• API Level 8
• Returns a directory on external storage for media files that are specific to the application. Media placed here will not be considered public, however, and won’t show up in MediaStore .
• This is external storage, however, so it is still possible for users and other applications to see and edit the files directly: there is no security enforced.
• Files placed here will be removed when the application is uninstalled, so it can be a good location in which to place large content files the application needs that one may not want on internal storage.
• Valid type values include DIRECTORY_PICTURES , DIRECTORY_MUSIC , DIRECTORY_MOVIES , and DIRECTORY_RINGTONES .

• API Level 8
• Returns a directory on internal storage for app-specific temporary files. The contents of this directory are visible to users and other applications.
• Files placed here will be removed when the application is uninstalled, so it can be a good location in which to place large content files the application needs that one may not want on internal storage.

Context.getExternalFilesDirs() and Context.getExternalCacheDirs() .

• API Level 19
• Identical features as their counterparts described previously, but returns a list of paths for each storage volume on the device (primary and any secondary volumes)
• For example, a single device may have a block of internal flash for primary external storage, and a removable SD card for secondary external storage.

• API Level 21
• Files placed in these volumes will be automatically scanned and added to the device’s media store to expose them to other applications. These will generally also be visible to the user through core applications like the Gallery.

Sharing files via a FileProvider

Sometimes you want to share internal-storage files with another app, without the bother of putting the data into a Cursor and creating a ContentProvider.

The FileProvider class allows you to make files available to another application, usually in response to an Intent. It is simpler to set up than a ContentProvider , but is actually a subclass of ContentProvider .

This example exposes a photo.jpg file from one application to another. For this example I have created an Android Studio project called FileProviderDemo , which contains two different applications in two different packages, providerapp and requestingapp . We’ll start by discussing the Provider app since it contains the actual FileProvider . However, you have to run the Requester application first, as it will start the Provider app.

Unlike the ContentProvider case, you rarely have to write code for the provider itself; instead, use the FileProvider class directly as a provider in your AndroidManifest.xml file, as shown in following example.

The provider definition

The provider does not have to be exported for this usage, but must have the ability to grant Uri permissions as shown. The meta-data element gives the name of a simple mapping file, which is required to map «virtual paths» to actual paths, as shown.

The filepaths.xml file

Finally, there has to be an Activity to provide the Uri to the requested file. In our example this is the ProvidingActivity , shown in following example.

The important part of this code is in the provideFile() method, which:

• Creates a Uri for the actual file (in this trivial example there is only one file, with a hardcoded filename)
• Adds flags to the result Intent to let the receiving app read this one file (only) with our permissions
• Sets the MIME type of the result
• Adds the file Uri as data to the result Intent
• Sets the result Intent , and the «success» flags to Activity.RESULT_OK • Calls finish() to end the Activity

Remember that the point of the FileProvider is to share files from one application to another, running with different user permissions. Our second application also has only one Activity , the «requesting» Activity. Most of this is pretty standard boilerplate code. In onCreate() , we create the requesting Intent :

The main part of the UI is a text area, which initially suggests that you request a file by pressing the button. That button’s action listener is only one line:

This will result in a subsequent call to onActivityComplete() , which is shown in following example.

Assuming that the request succeeds, you will get called here with requestCode set to the only valid action, RESULT_OK , and the resultIntent being the one that the providing Activity set as the Activity result—that is, the Intent wrapping the Uri that we need in order to read the file! So we just get the Uri from the Intent and open that as an input stream, and we can read the «secret» file from the providing application’s otherwise — private internal storage.

How to check free and used space in internal and external storage

There is auxiliary class to get information about free and used space in internal and external storage

How to download photo from url and save to storage

To download photo from url you can use android-async-http.

How to get file extension and mime type

You can get file extension and mime type:

Method to save an image to gallery and return URI in Kotlin

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How to read text file in android – Read from any folder internal & external

Read text file . How to read text file in android app? Some time developer think that it is very difficult to read text file in android, but truth is – it is very easy. You can read any text file and excel sheet from android app whether file located in internal storage or external storage. If you want to know how to read excel file from asset folder, please read this tutorial.

To read any file from android app, you must take permission to read external storage. otherwise app will crash at run time. In this tutorial, I am going to show you, how to select text file from gallery OR internal storage OR external storage and read text file. I am using a simple textview to display the text written on selected text file.

So in this tutorial the process is as follow. First I am writing the code for run time permission, then code for select file from gallery then read the text written in text file. If you want work with PDF file than you can read this tutorial – How to create PDF file, write text and image

How to Read Text file in android

Login & Download the Code

Step by Step Process

1. Add run time permission in Androidmanifest.xml
2. MainActivity.java run time permission code
3. Add select file from gallery or file manager
4. Get actual file path from file URI
5. Read file using bufferreader
6. Run the code

Add run time permission

First, add run time permission in androidmanifest.xml file.

activity-main.xml

MainActivity.java run time permission code

Because we are trying to read text file from phone storage, so you must add the code for run time permission in android app. Android introduce run time permission in api 24 marshmallow. So first check user phone’s android version is greater than or equal to marshmallow.

If android version is greater than marshmallow than user will see a alert dialog to accept permission to read text file. Once user will click on allow/ denied button the response will be received in onRequestPermissionsResult() method. There if it is positive response (means allow) than you should start function to choose file from gallery, otherwise show error massage to user.

Select file from gallery

It is the best way to give complete control to user to select any file from the gallery. You have to use intent to open gallery option. The response of the intent will be receive in onActivityResult() method. The onActivityResult will return the intent data.

NOTE- you can only get the URI of the file using intent, not the actual file path. to get the actual file path, you have to write different functions. Actually the URI is a index of file not the exact path. The text file can be located into any folder, so we need to write multiple condition to get file path. below is the table of URI path according to folder location.

Get actual file path from URI

You must check auth of each file. auth is parent folder name, using this name you can identify which condition will be correct to get file path.

below is the code to get actual file path from gallery file. Please watch the above video to understand why you must check multiple condition to get file path.

Read text file in android

Now you have file path, use this file path to read file using buffer reader. below is the complete code of MainActivity.java

Run the code

Now every thing has setup. Please run the code, select file from gallery. You will see the text read from the text file will be display on screen.

If you have any question, please contact me or use chat box.

Please comment below, if this tutorial help you. Your feed back is more important for me to create new videos and tutorial.

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