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Android Shared Storage 4 Kivy

A package for accessing Android Shared Storage.

2023-11-13 This repository is archived.

Overview

To use, add androidstorage4kivy to Buildozer requirements, see the examples.

Programming Model

The methods in this Python package provide a consistent file storage model and api across Android versions >= 5. As a result the model implements constraints that may not exist on some older versions of Android.

The model consists of 'private files' which are accessed as traditional OS files, and 'shared files' which are copied or deleted by the api. 'Shared files' can be shared between apps in the usual Android ways, 'private files' cannot be shared between apps.

On Android shared storage is structured as collections (Environment.DIRECTORY_MUSIC,Environment.DIRECTORY_DOCUMENTS, etc.) that each hold specific file types. Android documents the predefined collections.

Classes

This package contains three classes, SharedStorage, ShareSheet, and Chooser.

  • SharedStorage allows copying files to and from shared storage with the copy_to_shared(), copy_from_shared(), and delete_shared() methods.

  • ShareSheet allows sending plain text, or a 'shared file' to another app. Using the share_plain_text(), share_file(), and share_file_list() methods, these create an Android ShareSheet used to select the target app. You can also call the view_file() method to open a 'shared file' in another app - Android will try to use default application available for that specific file type.

  • Chooser allows selecting a 'shared file' using the Android Chooser UI. The callback returns a list of one or more shared files.

These classes are described in more detail in the following sections.

On Android a 'shared file' is usually (but not always) implemented as an 'android.net.Uri', this is not a Python file reference. Which is why we copy between shared and private files (which are Python files). For consistent behavior across Android versions use only this api to create, consume, or delete a 'shared file'.

External storage must be availaible, this may not be true on older devices with a removable sdcard.

On modern Android devices, and perhaps on older ones (which might alternatively use a file uri), this package depends on the Android Java Uri class to represent a content uri. In particular two methods in this class may be useful toString(), and parse(). Read that documentation.

In Python, use these like this:

content_uri_string = java_uri_class.toString()

from jnius import autoclass
Uri = autoclass('android.net.Uri')
java_uri_class = Uri.parse(content_uri_string)

The music_service_example uses these methods to pass uris between app and service. Because memory references cannot be passed in this case. Independent of Uri, in that case 'utf8' encoding is required by oscpy.

Permissions

  • Android < 10 : WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE
  • Android >= 10, android.api < 33 : READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE
  • Android >= 10, android.api >= 33 : READ_MEDIA_IMAGES, READ_MEDIA_VIDEO, READ_MEDIA_AUDIO, READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE

That Android >= 10, android.api >= 33 READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE is for reading from the documents collection.

Examples

SharedStorage Class

Overview

Use for copying files to and from shared storage, and deleting from shared storage.

The SharedStorage Class provides these methods: copy_to_shared(), copy_from_shared(), delete_shared()

API

 def copy_to_shared(private_file, collection = None, filepath = None)
     returns shared_file or None

 def copy_from_shared(shared_file)
     returns private_file or None

 def delete_shared(shared_file)
     returns True if deleted, else False

private_file - a fully qualified file path to a file in app private storage; copy_from_shared() copies to app private cache storage.

collection - override the default collection. Must be valid for the file type. For example .jpg (defaults to DIRECTORY_PICTURES) and can be DIRECTORY_DCIM, but not DIRECTORY_MOVIES. Invalid entries are ignored and the default is used.

filepath - shared storage filepath including file name, but not including 'Collection/app-Title'.

shared_file - A reference to a file in shared storage returned by copy_to_shared(). Or a string e.g. '//sub_dir/name.ext'.

There are also three utility functions:

    def get_cache_dir(self):
    	returns file path or None

    def get_app_title(self):
    	returns a string

    def get_file_MIME_type(self,file_name):	
    	returns a string

cache_dir is https://github.com/Android-for-Python/Android-for-Python-Users#app-cache-directory with the directory "FromSharedStorage" appended.

app_title is used in the shared storage path

MIME_type is used to determine in which collection a file belongs, it is determined based on the file externsion.

Implementation Details

MediaStore file versions (" (N)" inserted the file name) are usually not created. However when a file cannot be replaced (due to some internal permissions issue that reqires MANAGER permission to adddress) a new file version will be added. Use the File Manager app (which has MANAGER permission) to address the underlying issue.

Some MIME classifications (on which Collection classification is based) have changed with Android versions. For example '.ogg' files are 'application/ogg' on older devices and 'audio/ogg' on newer devices.

A share receive of a large file (such as an mp4) is slow on Android < 10. To improve performance of this case, copy the faster_copy directory in share_receive_example to your app and in buildozer.spec add android.add_src = faster_copy.

The Downloads directory is a special case. In this directory Android only allows access to files downloaded by the current app. The traditional common usage of Downloads as a shared pool of files is not possible.

Some users want to use the original shared storage filepath, not the filepath of a copy. This is possible with the Mediastore DATA column. However this column is deprecated, so from the point of view of this package the original shared storage filepath (DATA column) will in the long term be unsupportable.

ShareSheet Class

Overview

Enables sending either plain_text, a file, or a file list to another app. The target app is selected either with the ShareSheet UI, or specified with the api argument. Android requires that the target app must declare that it is able to receive shares of this type, for more details see the share_receive_example.

API

    def share_plain_text(self, plain_text, app = None):
    
    def share_file(self, shared_file, app = None):

    def share_file_list(self, shared_file_list, app = None):

    def view_file(self, shared_file):

plain_text is a string.

app a string identifying the target app (for example, 'com.google.android.gm' for Gmail), The default opens a ShareSheet to select a compatible app.

shared_file is a file in shared storage.

shared_file_list is a list of files in shared storage.

Android < 10

The ShareSheet class should probably be persistent since destroying the class destroys the shared uri.

Chooser Class

Overview

The Chooser class enables opening an Android Chooser, the chosen 'shared file' or 'shared files' is returned in a callback.

As an alternative to the Android Chooser, you may want to implement your own custom picker. There is an example of this in the music_service_example. That picker queries the Mediastore and hirearchicaly organizes music by genre, album, and track; displaying album art. The same approach can be used to custom pick from other media.

API

Instantiate the class with a callback method as the argument.

       self.chooser = Chooser(self.chooser_callback)

The Chooser UI is opened with choose_content(), this can optionally be filtered by MIME type. The Android Chooser recognizes MIME wildcards such as 'image/*' or '*/*' but not '*/jpg'.

       self.chooser.choose_content('video/*')

The selected files are reported by the app's callback method as a list. The default is one file in the list. To enable selecting multiple files, set multiple = True.

       self.chooser.choose_content('image/*', multiple = True)
   def chooser_callback(self, shared_file_list):
       self.private_files = []
       ss = SharedStorage()
       for shared_file in shared_file_list:
           self.private_files.append(ss.copy_from_shared(shared_file))