I am looking for a solution which uses Android API to transfer a text file from an Android powered device to a computer through USB cable. I have found USB host but I cannot use this because the computer can not act as a device for the Android host.
Do you have any suggestions how I can achieve this?
I have solved this problem by using adb status-window to continuously check for device status, and when a new device is connected, the required files are transferred to the computer using adb pull command.
In order to achieve a portable solution (i.e. to run independently of Android platform), I just copied the files 'adb.exe' and 'AdbWinApi.dll' into my application and used the adb from there.
Had similar problem where a software installed in PC needed to be able to access file inside the android phone through USB. After long research here is what worked for me (not sure if this is the best solution but it worked). Windows has Windows Portable Device(WPD) API which can be used to enumerate contents of a device through USB (and copy files between client and device).
There are few implementations in java
http://code.google.com/p/jmtp/ (works well but doesnt support copy function from device to pc though there is some support available to do this with source code)
another one is jusbpmp (available in google repository)
(if somebody finds a well documented and maintained implementation do share)
but since jmtp didnt work for me (copy function source compilation(for 64bit OS) failed), wrote C# program from scratch to copy files from device to PC. here is a nice tutorial
https://github.com/geersch/WPD/blob/master/src/part-3/README.md
You can write an app which will use http to contact your pc and send (POST) data to a known endpoint.
Keep in mind that the app will only have access to the data belonging to the app. You will not be able to access an arbitrary file from the file system
Related
I am trying to develop a file communication system that interfaces between the respective file systems of a Windows PC and a connected Android device. I realize a better (or at least simpler) way to do this would probably involve using the adb push and pull commands, but I am gathering options/trying to avoid developing additional communications on the Windows side beyond its basic OS file access. I know it is possible to interact with the device's storage directly from Windows when the device is physically connected via USB - if I understand correctly, this is commonly done using MTP? However, I am also currently constrained to only being able to use an emulated Android device. The Android Emulator is a useful tool for a variety of development situations, but I am not sure it was ever intended to appear as an MTP device in Windows like its physical counterparts do.
So could anyone provide documentation or some other resource establishing either
an MTP, UMS, etc. Windows connection is indeed not possible with the default QEMU Android Emulator; or
it is, and how.
Judging by the answer provided here - https://stackoverflow.com/a/21633596/1399272 - it does not appear that accessing the Android file system using a mounted drive in the Windows file system is an option, regardless of whether it is emulated or physically connected. So my question becomes moot point.
I'm trying to view the files and folders at root level on an android device using USB Debugging mode and windows. Is this possible? Phone is rooted.
I've downloaded a file explorer app which allows me to view it on the phone itself.
My main goal is to copy the mmssms.db from the phone.
Droid Explorer
http://de.codeplex.com/releases/view/612392
Window Apps:
Explorer:
SQLite Manager:
I was looking long and hard for a solution to this problem and the best I found was a root FTP server on the phone that you connect to on Windows with an FTP client like FileZilla, on the same WiFi network of course.
The root FTP server app I ended up using is FTP Droid. I tried a lot of other FTP apps with bigger download numbers but none of them worked for me for whatever reason. So install this app and set a user with home as / or wherever you want.
2021 EDIT: FTP Droid isn't being updated and doesn't work on modern Android versions, now I use primitive FTPd which is open source on Github
Then make note of the phone IP and connect with FileZilla and you should have access to the root of the phone. The biggest benefit I found is I can download entire folders and FTP will just queue it up and take care of it. So I downloaded all of my /data/data/ folder when I was looking for an app and could search on my PC. Very handy.
You can use Eclipse DDMS perspective to see connected devices and browse through files, you can also pull and push files to the device. You can also do a bunch of stuff using DDMS, this link explains a little bit more of DDMS uses.
EDIT:
If you just want to copy a database you can locate the database on eclipse DDMS file explorer, select it and then pull the database from the device to your computer.
If you have android, you can install free app on phone (Wifi file Transfer) and enable ssl, port and other options for access and send data in both directions just start application and write in pc browser phone ip and port. enjoy!
Obviously, you'll need a rooted android device. Then set up an FTP server and transfer the files.
I would like to turn my computer into an Android accessory using my application. So instead of a specialized hardware this will be just PC that will switch the phone into accessory mode, thus launching some Java app on the phone associated with the host hardware and create a communication channel.
I've found a sample code (plus some Java Android app) to do this on Linux using libusb. It works by "opening" the phone using the standard VID and PID. Then it sends a command to turn on the accessory mode, along with the metadata like model, version etc.
If the phone supports accessory mode it'll then disconnect and reenumerate with a different PID. The sample code then checks if it did and opens the new device.
However, I'm trying to get this running on Windows. I've found a few USB libraries, like LibUsbDotNet, but they all seem to require the device using a WinUSB/libusb driver. I've used a tool in LibUsbDotNet to generate a libusb driver for my phone, installing it over the old generic removable drive one. But this means I now can't access the phone as a removable drive when I want to, so this is not a solution.
Is there a way (preferably a library) that can open any connected USB device based on VID and PID, and then send a few raw commands to it?
After that the device will reenumerate with a different PID, which I can use to create my own WinUSB driver, so that is not an issue. I just need to inject some commands through/around the default driver to turn the accessory mode on.
(I would prefer .NET solution, but anything Windows is fine and I can write my own interop wrapper)
I am also searching for a similar solution. I tried the Linux version, with libusb, with little hickups, was able to communicate with the device.
While searching for the solutions on windows I tried many hacks.
If need to communicate with device in ADK mode, I need to send several Vendor Commands, now this I need to do while its connected in Mass Storage mode. This is impossible using Mass Storage driver. I tried to get the Node handle of connected USB device to see if could send vendor command, but there I could only file Get Descriptor requests. So I went ugly method, replaced mass storage driver with libusb-win32, to see it could do the same, YES, it worked, but not at all a good solution.
Still searching..
My Android app produces some files that I need to synchronize with my main PC program and the other way around. The common way I do this is using a FTP account where both my Android app and my PC program gets the latest version of the files, and this works just fine. Some of my clients does not have internet access on their Android devices, and so will have to synchronize with my program by connecting to the PC with a USB cable. For this I have a routine in my PC program that will synchronize the files on a specified folder on the Android device. The problem is that this method only works if the Android device can be mounted as a drive, and thus be assigned a drive letter by Windows.
Some devices, especially tablets running Honeycomb (I have experienced this on Samsung Galaxy 10.1 tab and Lenovo Thinkpad Tablet) will not be mounted as a drive, but instead be connected as a Windows Portable Device (WPD). In this case I cannot access the device from my program (which is written in Delphi) and thus my routine for synchronizing my files does not work.
My routine has to know a specific location of the folder to synchronize with to work, so if I could transfer the files from the device to a temporary folder on the PC, synchronize them and possibly transfer the files back on the device, that would solve my problem.
Can anyone suggest a way that I can transfer the files from the WPD device to a folder on my PC and back again? It has to be automated as my clients cannot transfer the files manually. Alternatively, is there a way to force a WPD device to function as a normal external drive and be assigned a drive letter?
You can use the WPD Automation API from your PC application. There's documentation available from the above page, although I haven't looked for any code samples. (I haven't had the need; for the apps I write for Android that have to synch with PCs, the devices all work as USB drives or can synch through Google documents (eg., contacts and calendar info).
One way to do it would be to go here and look at "adb push" and "adb pull" commands, this should work so long as the android device is connected via USB, but you have to download the SDK and get the files you need as a "special app cocktail" that you will give to the customers in order for sync-ing to work.
I hope it helps!
I would like to have an application sync itself with some files on a host computer.. Anyone know if this is possible? Eg: When you connect an Android phone to a computer i would like an application on the android system to read some allowed folders on the connected computer. Making it so the user doesn't have to sync files itself.
I ask possible, because i assume it isn't.. for security.
You won't be able to do it solely from the Android end, because Windows doesn't make the local drives available through the USB port like that (unless you have some custom driver on the Windows side).
Your Android device will probably show up to windows as a USB drive. If you have an SD card plugged in, you may see a second drive from the Windows side.
To do something like this, you'd probably need to have software running on the Windows side that did the syncing, and then copy the data from the /sdcard directory on the Android device to wherever you ultimately need it to be.