CODEWITHSUNDEEP
androidfilefile-managerinternal-storage
Sriram
Sriram

Reputation: 303

Creating a txt file and viewing it in the File manger

I have created an android app that gets input from user through EditText and writes them to name.txt file in phone's internal storage. Is it possible to open the text file in phone's file manager? I tried to get the file path using getFilesDir().getAbsolutePath()+"/"+FILE_NAME. But couldn't locate the file in file manager.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 645

Answers (2)

EJK
EJK

Reputation: 12527

You need to use External storage if you want another app like File Manager to access the file. Internal storage is only readable by your app.

In the comments you ask a valid question - "What if the phone doesnt have external storage...?". That is not really a concern today. See https://developer.android.com/training/data-storage/files:

Many devices now divide the permanent storage space into separate "internal" and "external" partitions. So even without a removable storage medium, these two storage spaces always exist...

==========

So change your above code to this:

getExternalFilesDir().getAbsolutePath()+"/"+FILE_NAME

getExternalFilesDir is a method from the android.content.Context class. So this call will work from your activity class which is a Context.

=============

Further supporting the choice of external storage is the following, also from https://developer.android.com/training/data-storage/files.

Internal storage is best when you want to be sure that neither the user nor other apps can access your files.

External storage is the best place for files that don't require access restrictions and for files that you want to share with other apps or allow the user to access with a computer.

Upvotes: 1

Elias Fazel
Elias Fazel

Reputation: 2113

there is private storage for each app that can be accessed from the app itself and then public storage /sdcard/... that other app can access too (it needs to get Storage Permission from system) this method will save a content in a file in private storage of app

public void saveFile(String fileName, String content) {
        try {
            FileOutputStream fOut = context.openFileOutput(fileName, Context.MODE_PRIVATE);
            fOut.write((content).getBytes());

            fOut.flush();
            fOut.close();
        } catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }

Upvotes: 1

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