I noticed a few apps use the convention: <External Storage Location>/Android/data/<package name>
For example, Google Earth places its cache on my Nexus One at /sdcard/ Android/data/com.google.earth Is this is a good standard to follow? It would be really good if there were at least some guidelines to follow. On a related note, I would love there to be a method like: Environment.getAppExternalStorageDirectory() which might, in the above example, return the directory: /sdcard/ Android/data/com.google.earth but most importantly, the app would be blissfully unaware of the exact location. Even better, you could add a manifest permission allowing the app to only access that folder (and sub folders etc). This would stop apps from accessing/deleting other sdcard data it should not have anything to do with. On Jan 11, 11:43 am, Andriy Zakharchuk <[email protected]> wrote: > Hello Dianne, > > thank you for clarification. But I have one more question. > > Everything you've said makes sense when we talk about internal > application files (configurations, temporarily storage whatever else). > However, there are few other cases. In my case I need to implement > backup/restore function. In this case I guess the user has to know the > directory where the files are stored (later backup files might be > copied to another storage). If the user can not configure this, then > he/she might have difficulties with finding backup files (at least the > directory is not obvious). > > So I think that before writing backup files toSDcardwe need to let > user to specify the directory where these files should be stored. We > still can use API to preset directory selection screen with some value > (e.g., /sdcard/<application-name>/backups), but we want to let user > choose the directory, so later when devicecardis mounted to the > desktop, the user could be sure he/she finds the files in the > specified directory. > > Does it make sense? > > On Jan 4, 11:14 am, Dianne Hackborn <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > > On Sun, Jan 3, 2010 at 11:11 PM, Alessandro Pellizzari > > <[email protected]>wrote: > > > > Please also consider devices with more than oneSDcard, like the > > > Samsung Galaxy (/sdcard is the internal 6.5 GB flash, /sdcard/sdis the > > > external removableSDcard). > > > In theory, your app should do nothing special about this. There is a public > > API to get the path the external storage; you should use that, and never > > hard-code paths. > > > Currently the platform only supports one external storage location, so I > > would suggest using that and staying blissfully unaware of whatever other > > stuff Samsung does. Unless they provide their own well-defined API to their > > own storage paths (via a library your app can link to), or contribute a > > patch to the platform to support other kinds of external storage, you should > > treat whatever else they are doing as non-existent: you have no way to know > > if that will exist in the future in the current form or at all. > > > If you need to store big chunks of data, you could let the user > > > > configure the path in which to save them. > > > That's one of the things we really don't want applications doing. :} We try > > very hard to keep paths out of the UI for users; for some specific kinds of > > apps it can make sense to expose them (such as file browsers), but users > > should not be confronted with paths when dealing with normal applications. > > > -- > > Dianne Hackborn > > Android framework engineer > > [email protected] > > > Note: please don't send private questions to me, as I don't have time to > > provide private support, and so won't reply to such e-mails. All such > > questions should be posted on public forums, where I and others can see and > > answer them. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Developers" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en
