Question

Is it possible to download files to an Android app’s asset’s directory?

I have some files under the app’s assets directory that could potentially be updated at a later date, I want to update these files with network download via the app.

Thanks

Answer 1

You cannot update assets. Full stop.

What you can do instead is unpack assets to internal memory or SD card and update them there.. I do that more or less in my android-menu-navigator: http://code.google.com/p/android-menu-navigator where I have menu of the simple menu-navigation based application. I can use the menu either from assets:

http://code.google.com/p/android-menu-navigator/source/browse/src/pl/polidea/navigator/retrievers/AssetMenuRetriever.java

(the test menu is here: http://code.google.com/p/android-menu-navigator/source/browse/#hg%2Fassets%2Ftestmenu )

or from downloaded menu:

http://code.google.com/p/android-menu-navigator/source/browse/src/pl/polidea/navigator/retrievers/RemoteZipMenuRetriever.java

Both are actually unpacking the menu and storing it on SD card.