Trying to read a file on the sdCard to a variable

Question

I have this function and when I call it, it won't return anything.

public String getfileFromSDCard(String filename){//get the file
    String text;
    text = "";

    File root = new File(Environment.getExternalStorageDirectory(), "Notes");
    if (!root.exists()) {
        root.mkdirs();
    }
    File file = new File(root,"file.txt");
    try {
        BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(file));
        String str;

        while ((str = br.readLine()) != null) {
            text = text + str;
        }
        br.close();
    }
    catch (IOException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    }
    Toast.makeText(this, text, Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();
    return text;
}

Do I need to add any permission to my android manifiest other than

...uses-permission android:name="android.permission.WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE" ... ( I worte this line right in the code)

I have this one added already and running cause I can easily write a file, but I cant read it afterward

This is how I'm calling the function from the onCreate

    TextView countDisplay = new TextView(this);
    CreatefiletoSDCard("testnumberone.txt","22222fkdf sdjf hjsdf sdj fsdf ");
    countDisplay.setText(getfileFromSDCard("testnumberone.txt"));

    this.setContentView(countDisplay);

ps: CreatefiletoSDCard() works.

Answer 1

Although you pass in a filename parameter in your getfileFromSDCard() method, you seem to have hardcoded the actual file(name) you're reading from to file.txt. Guessing by the filenames you use for creating your test files, the error is probably that you're trying to read from a non-existent file, no matter what name you actually pass into the method.

In other words, you probably want to change the following line:

File file = new File(root,"file.txt");

to:

File file = new File(root,filename);