Question

I want to dump Android logcat in a file whenever user wants to collect logs. Through adb tools we can redirect logs to a file using adb logcat -f filename, but how can I do this programmatically?

Answer 1

Here is an example of reading the logs.

You could change this to write to a file instead of to a TextView.

Need permission in AndroidManifest:

<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.READ_LOGS" />

Code:

public class LogTest extends Activity {
  @Override
  public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
    setContentView(R.layout.main);
    try {
      Process process = Runtime.getRuntime().exec("logcat -d");
      BufferedReader bufferedReader = new BufferedReader(
      new InputStreamReader(process.getInputStream()));

      StringBuilder log = new StringBuilder();
      String line;
      while ((line = bufferedReader.readLine()) != null) {
        log.append(line);
      }
      TextView tv = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.textView1);
      tv.setText(log.toString());
    } catch (IOException e) {
    }
  }
}