Problem Attaching internal file to GMail in my android app

Question

My app writes data to text files (on sd card and internal memory). Later the app emails the text files to a list of people. I am having trouble getting gmail to attach a fil

Answer 1

Like Dhego, I used a content provider. Specifically, a FileProvider.

https://developer.android.com/reference/android/support/v4/content/FileProvider.html

Using this only requires that you modify your Manifest and create an additional resource file. Also, you will need to obtain a validly formatted URI via a static method provided by FileProvider.

In your Manfiest:

    <provider
        android:name="android.support.v4.content.FileProvider"
        android:authorities="com.example.authority.fileprovider"
        android:exported="false"
        android:grantUriPermissions="true">
        <meta-data
            android:name="android.support.FILE_PROVIDER_PATHS"
            android:resource="@xml/file_paths" />
     </provider>

The "com.example.authority.fileprovider" is your application authority with "fileprovider" appended.

In the res/xml folder, create a file_paths.xml file that contains the paths to the files you want to expose. In my case, I was exposing them from the application cache directory, so my XML looks like:

    <paths xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
        <cache-path name="reports" path="reports/"/>
    </paths>

In my case, "reports" is a folder within the application cache directory that I am writing files to.

The last thing to do is in your code:

1. Write files you want to expose to the folders and storage areas specified in file_paths.xml.
2. Generate a valid URI to set on the Intent you will invoke for sending an email (Intent.ACTION_SEND).

Here's some sample code:

emailIntent.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_STREAM, FileProvider.getUriForFile(getActivity(), "com.example.authority.fileprovider", fileToAttach));

Invoke startActivity on your Intent and that should be it!

Answer 2

It appears that there is indeed an issue with gmail. Unfortunately however, at the time of the writing it seems it hasn't been fixed.

Answer 3

the only way I found around this was to make my own content provider and pass in the uri to my content provider as the attachment.