The best way to download a big file in android?

Question

I need to download a big file on my app (almost 2gb) and i was wondering what is the best way to do that and some libs to help me. First I looked the Android Asynchronous Http Library but I didn't find examples showing how to publish the progress or start, pause download. Then I don't know if should I use this lib or just use a standart http commons. Other problem is, should I use a service to download my file??

Could you guys give a hint, how to do that?

Answer 1

I've see you got a bunch of answer and none of them really answers it from a holistic point of view.

To download a 2k or 2gb file the actual code is the same using some type of connection handler and some type of input stream and output stream and usually wrapping the input stream with a buffered input stream. For that you can find infinite amount of java examples all around the web.

The trick here considering the Android platform is that because it's a lengthy operation, you shouldn't be doing it inside the activity life cycle at all.

Said that you have two options:

• as you suggested you can create a Service, I would suggest you to use the IntentService as it seems to be a perfect fit for this case. The IntentService automatically spans a new thread, through the intent you pass the URL as a String and let the service download using the streams, etc.

• another method that probably work well, but I've never personally used, is to use the DownloadManager that is available since Gingerbread. It shouldn't be difficult to call getSystemService(Context.DOWNLOAD_SERVICE) and call dwManag.enqueue(dwRequest);

hope it helps.