CODEWITHSUNDEEP
androidandroid-contentprovider
Malcolm
Malcolm

Reputation: 41498

Is it possible to access resources in another APK without using content providers?

I thought that it is impossible to access resources contained in other APK unless content providers are used. However, I stumbled upon an app called Better Keyboard. It uses skins, so I decided to download an example of a skin.

An example skin really surprised me. It contains almost no code, declares only an activity and no content providers. Nontheless it contains resources and they are apparently somehow accessed from Better Keyboard app if the APK with the skin gets installed. So how is it done?

Upvotes: 17

Views: 9147

Answers (3)

Nick Cheng
Nick Cheng

Reputation: 9

It is possible by using getresoucesforapplication and you need res.getidentifier to retrieve the resource Id. However, It seem not work when retrieving style resource.

Upvotes: 0

Kevin TeslaCoil
Kevin TeslaCoil

Reputation: 10097

I believe you're looking for

Resources res = mPackageManager.getResourcesForApplication("org.example.foo");

http://developer.android.com/reference/android/content/pm/PackageManager.html#getResourcesForApplication%28java.lang.String%29

Upvotes: 21

Jett Hsieh
Jett Hsieh

Reputation: 3159

Try this 

 PathClassLoader loader = 
 new PathClassLoader ("/data/app/com.skin.apk", null,PathClassLoader.getSystemClassLoader());
 InputStream f = loader.getResourceAsStream("res/drawable/icon.png");
 Bitmap bitmap=BitmapFactory.decodeStream(f);
 BitmapDrawable b=new BitmapDrawable(bitmap);
 mButton.setBackgroundDrawable(b);

Upvotes: 3

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