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BlackBerry Development: How to add resource files(to the filesystem/sdcard) during app installation

If you’re familiar with the BlackBerry app deployment, you’ll know that there’re 2 primary ways of installation – the OTA and the desktop. The former requires the .cod and .jad files to be present while the latter requires the .alx and .cod files.

Recently, I had to figure out a way to package a file, say, “test.txt” and place that into the filesystem…during installation. I’m not sure if there’s a better way but I learnt that one way was to basically to open an InputStream pointing to the source “test.txt”, use the FileConnection class to create a file “test.txt” within the BlackBerry device and then use the OutputStream to basically write to the filesystem.

Perhaps sample code will make more sense:-

// Open inputstream to source file
String fileName = "test.txt";
InputStream inputStream = getClass().getResourceAsStream(fileName);
int fileLen = inputStream.available();
byte[] data = new byte[fileLen];
String target = "file:///store/home/whatever/"+fileName;

// Creates a file on the BB with the same name as the source file
FileConnection saveFile = (FileConnection)Connector.open(target);
saveFile.create();

// Opens the outputstream and writes everything from the inputstream to the file on the BB
OutputStream outputStream = saveFile.openOutputStream();
outputStream.write(data);
outputStream.close();

If the resource file(s) are huge, it would certainly bloat the .cod file.

Somehow I find this quite inefficient…is there a better way to do this?

Related posts:

  1. Setting Up For BlackBerry Development: How to Add Simulators to the BB JDE
  2. BlackBerry Development…about two months in.
  3. WordPress for BlackBerry 1.4 is out
  4. BlackBerry Torch 9800 goes live
  5. Test Post from BlackBerry WordPress App

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