I’m writing an Android app which uses wi-fi, so I can’t easily debug to emulator (no wi-fi support… ;-), so I go with my real device (a Samsung Galaxy S).
I would like to be able to read data files my app writes, to debug and test.
If I use, say:
new File(getFilesDir(), "myfile.xml");
I get my data file written to /data/data/MYPACKAGE/files/, but that directory is non accessible via adb (nor via Eclipse’s DDMS).
My device is not rooted (and I’d prefer to avoid rooting it, if possible… 😉
Where should I write my data file to?
It probably makes sense to put the files on the sdcard during development, formally you should call getExternalStorageDirectory() to find it and of course will need external storage permission.
Alternatively, you could give public access to your private files in the debug version; just don’t forget to turn that off before you ship (as a certain Internet telephony company reportedly did). However, this will not make the private files browsable as the intervening directories are not, you would only be able to adb pull them via their exact path name.
A third choice would be to leave the data internal and private, but have a debug function to copy it over to the sdcard for analysis. You could even do this in a separate .apk establishing a shared user id with the first, meaning no changes at all to your application.