Android tutorial – display embedded HTML file in WebView

Working on Power Schedule, I wanted to make a short help file, with some formatting. It seems there were several ways of doing this, but I chose to include an embedded HTML file into my application. It seemed easier to just edit an HTML file in an editor.
So let’s get started…

• first, embed an html file in the app resources. For this, create the “raw” subfolder in “res” folder and add your HTML formatted file:
  


• use a WebView view in your layout file:

  1	<WebView xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"

  2	android:id="@+id/webviewHelp android:layout_width="fill_parent"

  3

  android:layout_height="fill_parent"/>

• use this code in your activity onCreate() method:

  1	WebView webview = (WebView) findViewById(R.id.webviewHelp);

  2	webview.loadData(readTextFromResource(R.raw.help), "text/html", "utf-8");

  where readTextFromResource is something like this:
  
  

  01	private String readTextFromResource(int resourceID)

  02

  {

  03	InputStream raw = getResources().openRawResource(resourceID);

  04	ByteArrayOutputStream stream = new ByteArrayOutputStream();

  05

  int i;

  06

  try

  07

  {

  08	i = raw.read();

  09	while (i != -1)

  10

  {

  11	stream.write(i);

  12	i = raw.read();

  13

  }

  14	raw.close();

  15

  }

  16	catch (IOException e)

  17

  {

  18	e.printStackTrace();

  19

  }

  20	return stream.toString();

  21

  }