Where Does Ionic Store Android Executable and SQLite DB?

Ionic Framework ionic-v3
1

Dear…“Ionickers”? :slight_smile:

I am relatively new to Ionic but not to Android development. And something about Ionic that’s driving me nuts that I have to ask about:

When an Android Ionic Cordova app is created, just where does the executable file go?? I have plugged in two phones running Android and created test apps, and done deployments two different ways (“ionic cordova run android” and copying the app-debug.apk from the project folder directly to the device and installing from that). One of my test apps includes SQLite, the lite database, and I can’t find any SQLite files on the device either.

It doesn’t matter whether I have my Android device plugged into a computer and I use Windows File Explorer to do a hard search for “apk” or “db” files, or whether I use an on-device app like File Commander to search from on the device. It just turns up nothing. Even the Android >> Data folder doesn’t show the package name.

How is Ionic flying below the file system radar like this, on Android? Magic???

Thanks,
Charles

P.S.: Running on a Samsung Galaxy S9 Plus and a Motorola G4

2

Magic would be one way of putting it. All your code and assets are bundled up into the app binary. This is why attempts to deal with assets using native filesystem calls fail. They live inside a virtual read-only filesystem baked into the APK, and the best, if not only, way of getting at them is via HTTP.