Question

My app widget use a database, and it’s preloaded in asset directory which activity copy it to database directory on first run.

But if widget is inserted before that, an exception is thrown as the database doesn’t exist yet.

Is there anyway the widget check for the file and if it doesn’t exist, get it from assets and copy it instead of activity?!?

Answer 1

I really recommend using SQLiteAssetHelper for packaging databases in an app. You can then use getReadableDatabase()/getWriteableDatabase() as normal, and SQLiteAssetHelper will transparently unpack your database from assets if needed.

That being said, if you are sure that you want to do this yourself, call getAssets() on the Context passed into onUpdate() of your AppWidgetProvider.

Note that onUpdate() of your AppWidgetProvider is called on the main application thread, so just like you are (hopefully) doing your activity database I/O in a background thread, you should do the same for your app widget. A typical solution for an app widget is to have the work be done by an IntentService started by onUpdate().