Retrieve database or any other file from the Internal Storage using run-as

Question

On a non-rooted android device, I can navigate to the data folder containing the database using the run-as command with my package name. Most files types I am c

Answer 1

For app's debug version, it's very convenient to use command adb exec-out run-as xxx.yyy.zzz cat somefile > somefile to extract a single file. But you have to do multiple times for multiple files. Here is a simple script I use to extract the directory.

#!/bin/bash
P=
F=
D=

function usage()
{
    echo "$(basename $0) [-f file] [-d directory] -p package"
    exit 1
}

while getopts ":p:f:d:" opt
do
    case $opt in
        p)
            P=$OPTARG
            echo package is $OPTARG
            ;;
        f)
            F=$OPTARG
            echo file is $OPTARG
            ;;
        d)
            D=$OPTARG
            echo directory is $OPTARG
            ;;
        \?)
            echo Unknown option -$OPTARG
            usage
            ;;
        \:)
            echo Required argument not found -$OPTARG
            usage
            ;;
    esac
done

[ x$P == x ] && {
    echo "package can not be empty"
    usage
    exit 1
}

[[ x$F == x  &&  x$D == x ]] && {
    echo "file or directory can not be empty"
    usage
    exit 1
}

function file_type()
{
    # use printf to avoid carriage return
    __t=$(adb shell run-as $P "sh -c \"[ -f $1 ] && printf f || printf d\"")
    echo $__t
}

function list_and_pull()
{
    t=$(file_type $1)
    if [ $t == d ]; then
        for f in $(adb shell run-as $P ls $1)
        do
            # the carriage return output from adb shell should
            # be removed
            mkdir -p $(echo -e $1 |sed $'s/\r//')
            list_and_pull $(echo -e $1/$f |sed $'s/\r//')
        done
    else
        echo pull file $1
        [ ! -e $(dirname $1) ] && mkdir -p $(dirname $1)
        $(adb exec-out run-as $P cat $1 > $1)
    fi
}

[ ! -z $D ] && list_and_pull $D
[ ! -z $F ] && list_and_pull $F

Hope it would be helpful. This script is also available at gist.

Typical usage is

$ ./exec_out.sh -p com.example.myapplication -d databases

then it will extract all files under your apps databases directory, which is /data/data/com.example.myapplication/databases, into current directory.