How can I pull databases off my android onto my desktop?

Question

I'm trying this with my Nexus One. I have the android SDK and have used the command adb pull /data/data/com.myapp.android/databases C:\pulls but all I get is pull: building file list... 0 files pulled. 0 files skipped. Also, it seems no matter how much data I add to the tutorial NotePad app I installed, the data size for the app (as shown in Settings) never exceeds 8KB. How is this possible? Is there some other place where databases are stored? When I use the File Explorer view (that's part of ADT) in Eclipse, I see there's nothing in /data. To add a twist, I have no trouble pulling any other files from the device. It's just databases I have trouble with. Am I missing something? Thanks much.

Answer 1

Accessing internal storage is not possible unless your phone is rooted. One simple way is to use the emulator, and then you can get at the files. For getting a database off the device I wrote a little utility and put in some debug UI for it:

private void backupDb() throws IOException {
    File sd = Environment.getExternalStorageDirectory();
    File data = Environment.getDataDirectory();

    if (sd.canWrite()) {

        String currentDBPath = "/data/com.yourcompany.yourapp/databases/yourapp.db";
        String backupDBPath = "/yourapp_logs/yourapp.db";

        File currentDB = new File(data, currentDBPath);
        File backupDB = new File(sd, backupDBPath);

        if (backupDB.exists())
            backupDB.delete();

        if (currentDB.exists()) {
            makeLogsFolder();

            copy(currentDB, backupDB);
       }

        dbFilePath = backupDB.getAbsolutePath();
   }
}

 private void makeLogsFolder() {
    try {
        File sdFolder = new File(Environment.getExternalStorageDirectory(), "/yourapp_logs/");
        sdFolder.mkdirs();
    }
    catch (Exception e) {}
  }

private void copy(File from, File to) throws FileNotFoundException, IOException {
    FileChannel src = null;
    FileChannel dst = null;
    try {
        src = new FileInputStream(from).getChannel();
        dst = new FileOutputStream(to).getChannel();
        dst.transferFrom(src, 0, src.size());
    }
    finally {
        if (src != null)
            src.close();
        if (dst != null)
            dst.close();
    }
}