Develop Reference

Read an already opened file using FileReader

My android app opens up a ZIM File stored on device. The ZIM File has multiple HTML pages in it. I want to read the text from a single HTML page. The HTML page cannot be accessed directly with it's filePath but the ZIM file could be.
For example:
/storage/emulated/0/Download/wikipedia_en_ray_charles_2018-10.zim
Since there's no filePath for the HTML page to open it directly. The only way to read text from it as per my knowledge would be while it's opened in the app. So, my question is that if there is any way I could read text from a HTML page while it's already opened in the app and there's no way to access it(AFAIK).
The only thing I'm getting for the HTML page is it's name combined with the content uri.
content://org.kiwix.kiwixmobile.zim.base/Ray_Charles.html
But this couldn't be accessed from the device.
Here's the code I've written that works for HTML files on device which have a file path.
`
String answer = "";
try {
FileReader index = new FileReader(selectedFilePath);
BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(index);
String line = "";
while ((line = reader.readLine()) != null) {
answer += line;
}
reader.close();
`

How do I go about setting TextView to display UTF-8 when the String is not an embedded Resource?

I'm encountering an odd situation whereby strings that I load from my resource XML file that have Spanish characters in them display correctly in my TextViews, but strings that I'm fetching from a JSON file that I load via HTTP at runtime display the missing char [] boxes
ESPAÑOL for example, when embedded in my XML strings works fine, but when pulled from my JSON is rendered as SPAÃ[]OL, so the Ñ is transformed into a à and a missing char!
I'm not sure at what point I need to intercept these strings and set the correct encoding on them. The JSON text file itself is generated on the server via Node, so, I'm not entirely sure if that's the point at which I should be encoding it, or if I should be encoding the fileReader on the Android side, or perhaps setting the TextView itself to be of some special encoding type (I'm unaware that this is an option, just sort of throwing my hands in the air, really).
[EDIT]
As per ianhanniballake's suggestion I am logging and seeing that the screwy characters are actually showing up in the log as well. However, when I look at the JSON file with a text viewer on the Android file system (it's sitting on the SDCARD) it appears correct.

So, it turned out that the text file was, indeed, encoded correctly and the issue was that I wasn't setting UTF-8 as my encoding on the FileInputStream...
The solution is to read the file thusly:
static String readInput() {
StringBuffer buffer = new StringBuffer();
try {
FileInputStream fis = new FileInputStream("myfile.json");
InputStreamReader isr = new InputStreamReader(fis, "UTF8");
Reader in = new BufferedReader(isr);
int ch;
while ((ch = in.read()) > -1) {
buffer.append((char) ch);
}
in.close();
return buffer.toString();
} catch (IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
return null;
}
}

How do I store files on an android phone?

When creating an Android application, I have some files that needs to be stored on the android itself.
How do I do this?

If you have local files, like some error tones, some openning video.. then place it in you assets folder of your project.
If you have dynamic data need to download at run time then use this guide.

Best place for generic files would be the assets folder.
You can access files through the AssetManager, which you can get with Activity.getAssets() for example.
Here is an example how you could access a text file:
try {
BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(
new InputStreamReader(getAssets().open("sometextfile.txt")));
// do stuff with br
} catch (IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
For more information on AssetManager read the Java Doc. Oh and yes, you can create folders in assets.

If you want to keep some files like readme.txt or even music files, you can use the raw folder inside of res folder. So create a folder named raw inside of res folder.
Inside of raw folder, let us assume that there is a file named readme.txt, assuming that the Activity class is called MyActivity.
Now, you can read the contents of a file into a String as shown below:
StringBuilder strContents = new StringBuilder();
String thisLine;
InputStream is = MyActivity.this.getResources().openRawResource(R.raw.readme);
InputStreamReader isr = new InputStreamReader(is);
BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(isr);
while ((thisLine = br.readLine()) != null) { // while loop begins here
strContents.append(thisLine);
}
br.close();
//Now you have the data in strContents
Alternately, assets is also one such folder that you can use since the raw folder contains the file as is without any optimization, zipping done by Android.
So create an assets folder in your Project root folder and place your files there e.g. myfile.
Now, you can get an instance of the file InputStream as given below:
InputStream is = getBaseContext().getAssets().open("mydb");

how to decode characters in utf - 8 format in android

i have the following text in my strings.xml file
\n\nSVG Service Verlags GmbH & Co. KG \n
Schwertfegerstra?e 1-3\n
D-23556 L?beck\n
this is german text.
i need to decode this using utf-8 and then set it as text of a textview.
how do i go about this
thank you in advance.
EDIT:
i have tried the following
String decodedstring = URLDecoder.decode(nodevalue, "UTF-8");
this also does not work. why does this not work?

Some things to check.
Make sure your xml is tagged with the right encoding.
Make sure your xml file is SAVED with the right encoding. Looking at the text you pasted (from a browser?) it looks like the file is already mangled. Schwertfegerstra?e should be Schwertfegerstraße.
When you open the file you need to use an InputStreamReader with the encoding set.
See this page for an example:
http://www.mkyong.com/java/how-to-read-utf-8-encoded-data-from-a-file-java/
The key bit is:
BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(
new InputStreamReader(
new FileInputStream(fileDir), "UTF8"));

reading unicode text from assets

Trying to read an utf-8 encoded file in android...
InputStreamReader reader = new InputStreamReader(assets.open("data.txt"), "UTF-8");
BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(reader);
String line;
//The line below throws an IOException!!
line = br.readLine();
What's wrong with this code?

It looks like you file is too big, you have to split it onto several files (1048576 bytes maximum for each) or find another way to reduce file size. Here is an article about similar problem http://androidgps.blogspot.com/2008/10/dealing-with-large-resources.html