Android Question Open html file from dirassets (internal)

[trepdas]

Hello Good People,

in my current project I need to open a single html file (which is sitting in the dir assets) with the device's default browser.

I added reference to phone lib and tried the following :

Dim pi As PhoneIntents

StartActivity (pi.OpenBrowser (File.DirAssets,"page.html"))

obviously, not working.

can anyone advice me how to make this work?

also,the app will be mainly used in amazon's kindle devices so I need a solution to work on that too.

 

[JohnC]

Since you want an external program (the device's browser) to be able to access a file that your app is providing, you need to:

1) Copy it from the .DirAssets to a Shared directory.
2) Use the below lib to allow the file to be accessible from external apps.

[class] FileProvider - share files

Edit: FileProvider is included as an internal library now. After investigating several issues with the current FileProvider code that you can find in the forum, I decided to make some improvements and implement it in a class. Starting from Android 7 (API 24) you cannot directly share file uris...

www.b4x.com

 

[kisoft]

Why in the browser? You can do this with webview...

    Dim xui As XUI
    Dim WebView1 As WebView
    WebView1.LoadUrl(xui.FileUri(File.DirAssets,"page.html"))

 

[trepdas]

Why in the browser?

    Dim xui As XUI
    Dim WebView1 As WebView
    WebView1.LoadUrl(xui.FileUri(File.DirAssets,"page.html"))

You can do this with webview...

amazon doesn't support webview

 

[trepdas]

because the internal file contains an affiliate link and will be effective only with the default browser's cookies... :/

but, if the webview will open the url with the default browser...that can be helpful..

 

[trepdas]

Since you want an external program (the device's browser) to be able to access a file that your app is providing, you need to:

1) Copy it from the .DirAssets to a Shared directory.

like this?
File.Copy(File.DirAssets, "page.html", File.Dirinternal, "page.html")
is it mandatory to copy it? can't I ask the default browser to read the file directly from dirassets?

 

[JohnC]

No, the fileprovider lib code that I linked to has a routine that will return a "Shared" directory for you to use. That is the directory that you need to copy the file into.

Yes, it is mandatory that you use this shared directory and this file-provider method if you want an external program (the device's default browser) to be able to access it.