res / raw，assets或sdcard？

Question

I am developing an app which is heavy on images, videos and other resources. What would be the proper place to store all this info? I can see that programmatically the raw folder is probably the easiest to handle, but what is the correct policy to this?

Answer 1

• Assets is really bad place for items that are already compressed - when you build your app those will be tried to be compressed and this will have performance impact. Also in decompression.
• Res / raw is a good way to go if you have the images in advance, especially if you do not wan to download them after launching the app, thus having the user to wait.

• Sdcard should give you the most space. However, you will either need to download the resources from the net, I can not think of a way you ship them with the application and them move them to the sdcard. When you download the resources from the internet make sure you store them in a subfolder of:

   private File getResourceFilePath(String ralativePath, Context context) { if (Environment.MEDIA_MOUNTED.equals(Environment.getExternalStorageState())) { return new File(context.getExternalFilesDir(null), ralativePath); } else { return new File(context.getFilesDir(), ralativePath); } } 

Otherwise you risk the resources being available in the Gallery of the user's device etc.

Answer 2

Keep in mind that if you store it in the res or raw folder it will be included in your apk file which will make your compiling and uploading to the play store longer and also make user downloads and updates from the play store take longer.

If the media is pretty static and over a few megs, make it a zip file that gets downloaded on the side and stored in a separate folder, that the user can pick. That way you can update the media separate from updating the application.

If you go down the zip file route, you should check out the APK expansion file support that google play has. http://developer.android.com/google/play/expansion-files.html

Note that if you use the expansion, other stores (Amazon, Nook, etc.) will still need the download a zip file support in your app.

-James