Android- Storing Large files at compile time

How exactly does one go about such a simple thing in this beautifully over-complicated framework?

Yes I've read the documentation on Data Storage for Android, about 54.5 times. But I can not find anyplace where the documentation describes how you should go about placing files on the external storage at compile time.

Here's what I want to do: I want to include a couple of (big) (10-20mb) audio files in my application. Naturally, I do not want these to be stored on the internal storage, because they're just too big. So placing them in res/raw is not an option (beca开发者_C百科use, if I understand correctly, things in res/raw will be placed in the internal storage of the phone, correct?)

The documentation only states that "if you want to store static files at compile time, use res/raw". Now if Android is smart enough to place those files on the external storage all by itself then I'm forever greatful.. But somehow I doubt that. All help is appreciated :) (Sorry if it seems like I have an attitude, I've just spent way too much time on something so simple)

Thanks again :)

UPDATE: I ended up downloading the files from the application instead of including them at install-time. Thanks for the help guys!

I hit a problem while trying to download through a url, spent a lot of time trying to get it to work, and in the end the problem was because I hadn't declared the correct permission in the android manifest file! So to anyone who's looking to download stuff in their apps, do not forget to set the permissions in the android manifest, here are the permissions I needed:

<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE"></uses-permission>
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.INTERNET"></uses-permission>
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.ACCESS_NETWORK_STATE"></uses-permission>
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.READ_PHONE_STATE"></uses-permission>

Place these above the start of the tag

If your large files are in the APK, they'll be stored wherever the APK gets stored - this can be internal or external, and it seems that this is not what you want. The most likely option for you seems to be to place the files on a web site and during the first run of your application, it must notice that the files do not exist and retrieve them post-installation.

how you should go about placing files on the external storage at compile time.

I'm assuming the above is a typo and you mean at install time.

As for your requirement - it's not possible to instruct the Android Application Manager to unpack different parts of an APK to different places during the installation.

Further to this, there's no guarantee that an APK download will go to the internal or external memory storage (where it will stay unless otherwise deleted).

And even further to this, there's no guarantee that even if a device has external storage, it will be available at installation time or have enough free space.

At this point I wonder about audio files which are 10-20MB in size - either they're very long (in duration) or they're encoded at a high bit-rate. If it's the latter then this doesn't make too much sense as most mobile devices have fairly poor audio reproduction (in relative terms)....just some thoughts to mull over.

I personally think mah's suggestion of downloading post-installation may be a better approach but my comments about availability of external storage still hold true.

Proper approach to solving your problem on Android is "don't put them with your application". Just download them on first start from your web server (using HTTP client API) or, if these files will be upgraded independently of the application itself, prepare them as a separate "application" for the user to download via Market.