Question

I would like to know – are there ways to access android resources and/or assets files (or files from any other folder) outside of an Activity (without passing context)?

Can’t access without context:

getResources().getIdentifier("resource_name", "drawable", getPackageName());
getAssets().open("file_in_assets_folder_name");

Throws Exception if not in Activity:

try {
    Class class = R.drawable.class;
    Field field = class.getField("resource_name");
    Integer i = new Integer(field.getInt(null));
} catch (Exception e) {}

Also tried the below, but it complains file doesn’t exist (doing something wrong here?):

URL url = new URL("file:///android_asset/file_name.ext");
InputSource source = new InputSource(url.openStream());
//exception looks like so 04-10 00:40:43.382: W/System.err(5547): java.io.FileNotFoundException: /android_asset/InfoItems.xml (No such file or directory)

Answer 1

If the folders are included in the Project Build Path, you can use ClassLoader access files under them outside the android.content.Context, for instance, from a POJO (in case if you don’t want to pass a reference of android.content.Context):

String file = "res/raw/test.txt";
InputStream in = this.getClass().getClassLoader().getResourceAsStream(file);

• The res folder is included into Project Build Path by default by all Android SDK version so far.
• The assets folder was included into Project Build Path by default before Android SDK r14.

To add folders into Project Build Path, right click your project — Build Path — Configure Build Path, add your folder (for example, assets if using later SDK version) as a Source folder in build path.

Check out the similar question I answered before at here.