Delete file after sharing via intent

Question

I\'m trying to delete a temporary file after sharing it via android\'s Intent.ACTION_SEND feature. Right now I am starting the activity for a result and in OnActivityResult,

Answer 1

I noticed the same behavior with a similar approach. While watching logcat for errors I saw gmail complaining that it couldnt find the attachment. So, yes, it seems the intent returns BEFORE gmail has actually read the file for attachment.

I havent gotten around to a solution yet but it's likely going to be something like:

• move the file to some directory so I know it's one I've decided to send
• send it as attachment via ACTION_SEND
• at next onResume for my start screen activity, delete files in the "sent" directory that are older than some time frame that's reasonably long enough for the send to actually have happened

Choosing an appropriate time frame might be tricky since it's probably the case that gmail (or other ACTION_SEND providers) dont actually read the file until it has a network connection. I'm thinking 24 hours should be reasonable and in my case I'm dealing with diagnostic logs so there's no real harm in deleting one too soon if the user has been off network for a long period of time.

If the content of your file is text and it's not obscenely large a simpler approach may be to read the contents of the file and use Intent.putExtra(android.content.Intent.EXTRA_TEXT, yourText) to inline it into the body of the message.