Delphi XE5 – deploying and accessing local files on iOS and Android

by Nov 23, 2013

Larry in Canada recently sent me an email asking a Delphi XE5 mobile multi-device question: "How do you include files and/or folders containing files with a Delphi Android application APK file?" I told him I would create a simple example and explain how deploy a file with your application and then access it from a Delphi app for iOS and Android. To accomplish this, you create a new mobile app, write one or more lines of code, the Project | Deployment menu item and use the System.IOUtils unit's TPath.GetDocumentsPath method and PathDelim in your code.

The steps I followed to create my sample mobile app

1) File | New | FireMonkey Mobile Application – Delphi and used the "Blank Application" project template.

2) On the form, I added 1 TButton, 2 TLabel and 1 TImage components.

3) I double clicked on the TButton component to create the OnClick event handler.

4) I added a "uses System.IOUtils;" just below the {$R *.fmx} in the implementation section.

5) I added the following code in the event handler to display the documents path and to load the bitmap from the documents folder:

    procedure TForm1.Button1Click(Sender: TObject);
    
begin
    
  DocPathLabel.Text := TPath.GetDocumentsPath;
    
  Image1.Bitmap.LoadFromFile(TPath.GetDocumentsPath + PathDelim + 'davidi_tiedye.jpg');
    
end;

6) In the Project Manager, I added Android and iOS Target Platforms so that I can build for each of the two platforms.

7) Using the Project | Deployment menu item, I chose the Android and the iOS Device platforms and for each one I clicked on the "Add Files" button in the local toolbar to select the bitmap file I want to deploy with my app and set the Remote Path column value:

    For Android, set the Remote Path to assets\internal
    For iOS, set the Remote Path to StartUp\Documents

Here are screen shots of each of the resulting Deployment settings:

7) Compile, Deploy and Run the app on Android (I used my Samsung Galaxy S4) and iOS (I used my iPhone 4s) producing the following result when I click on the Button:

You can read additional information about mobile application development and deployment on the Embarcadero DocWiki using the following URLs:

If you don't have Delphi or RAD Studio XE5 you can download the free trial at http://www.embarcadero.com/products/rad-studio/downloads