Android Universal Image Loader to get bitmaps from Another app's Resources

Question

I know it is possible to use another app's bitmaps using the following blockquote, or similar:

String packageName = "com.some.package";

Resources res = getPackageManager().getResourcesForApplication(packageName);

int resId = res.getIdentifier("some_bitmap_icon", "drawable", packageName);

((BitmapDrawable) res.getDrawable(resId)).getBitmap();

Is there anyway of passing res and resIdto Android-Universal-Image-Loader to directly load the bitmap from the 3rd party app?

Or would I have to copy the bitmap to the SD card, then display it by passing "file:///mnt/sdcard/some_temp_bitmap"

Answer 1

Thanks to @CommonsWare for pointing me in the right direction.

I started by extending BaseImageDownloader, and overriding getStreamFromOtherSource:

public class CustomImageDownloader extends BaseImageDownloader {
    public CustomImageDownloader(Context context) {
        super(context);
    }

    @Override
    protected InputStream getStreamFromOtherSource(String imageUri, Object extra) {
        if (imageUri.startsWith("thirdparty://")) {
            try {
                String drawableString = imageUri.replace("thirdparty://", "");
                String[] location = drawableString.split("/");

                Resources res = context.getPackageManager().getResourcesForApplication(location[0]);
                return res.openRawResource(Integer.parseInt(location[1]));
            } catch (PackageManager.NameNotFoundException e) {
                return null;
            }
        } else throw new UnsupportedOperationException(imageUri);
    }
}

Then implemented this class in my ImageLoaderConfiguration using:

ImageLoaderConfiguration config = new ImageLoaderConfiguration.Builder(context)
    .imageDownloader(new CustomImageDownloader(context))
    .build();
ImageLoader.getInstance().init(config);

Then it's just a case of starting the image loader using:

ImageLoader.getInstance().displayImage("thirdparty://"+ packageName + "/" + resId, imageView, options);

Now Android universal image loader can be used for loading bitmaps from 3rd party apps.