Referring to Android Resources Using URIs

In addition to loading Android resources using the Resource manager, you can also reference resources using a specially-formatted URI. Resource URIs can be referenced by resource type/name or by resource identifier. This can be especially useful if you are using a control like a VideoView which takes either a file path or a URI for the video source.

For example, let's say we have a VideoView and we want to load a resource from the raw resources called myvideo.3gp. We could construct a URI in two ways:

Using the resource id, the format is:

"android.resource://[package]/[res id]"

Uri path = Uri.parse("android.resource://com.androidbook.samplevideo/" + R.raw.myvideo);

or, using the resource subdirectory (type) and resource name (filename without extension), the format is:

"android.resource://[package]/[res type]/[res name]"

Uri path = Uri.parse("android.resource://com.androidbook.samplevideo/raw/myvideo");

This Uri can then be used to source the VideoView as follows:

VideoView myVid = (VideoView) findViewById(R.id.VideoView1);
myVid.setVideoURI(path);

You can now refer to any resource by URI.