Question

I’m having trouble reading in from a .CSV file in an android app. Mainly a “FileNotFound” error. Where would be the easiest place to put the file, and what would be the address to it. I have been messing around with a few different places but have had no luck.

Can anyone point me in the right direction?

Answer 1

You’ll probably want it on the removable storage (SD card). First you’ll want to check if the storage is available, then read/write.

The docs have some notes on this: http://developer.android.com/intl/de/guide/topics/data/data-storage.html#filesExternal
(Note the API level 8 stuff there, such as getExternalFilesDir, I haven’t used that yet, but looks handy, if you can guarantee >=8.)

You can check if storage is there with something like:

public boolean isExternalStorageAvail() {
      return Environment.getExternalStorageState().equals(Environment.MEDIA_MOUNTED);
   }

If it’s not there show a Toast (at a minimum) or otherwise let the user know.

Then read it like:

File f = new File(Environment.getExternalStorageDirectory() + "/mycsvlocation/myfile.csv");

Then you can use the regular File methods to check if it’s there, it’s readable, etc., and then use it.

Also note that the docs recommend you use a location on the SD card like “Android/data//files”, and that’s a reasonable recommendation, but many apps just use “/appname/” or such.

And — one more thing, you can put the file there just by mounting the SD card and creating that structure and copying a file over, of course. Alternatively, you could do that programatically (from your app) as well, but it sounds like you already have the file, and just want to read it.