ZIM files can't manually be opened from some file managers

[mhutti1]

Some file managers can see the file association but some such as the default in 6.0 upwards can't.

[kelson42]

Yes I confirm this from a personal point-of-view and also I hear about that problem time to time with user feedbacks.

[mhutti1]

Steps to reproduce:

1. Download a ZIM file through our app.
2. Attempt to open local file in a file manager.

What you get:

• In the majority of file managers this fails (e.g android 7.0 default settings file manager).

What we want:

• ZIM file opens in our app for (all if not most) file managers.

[mhutti1]

So the problem is that android can't associate files by extension only by mime type. But android also doesn't really support mime types. This leads us to have to use application/octet-stream as a general mime type meaning our app might try to open some unrelated files if the user clicks on them. I think that this is a decent albeit annoying compromise for now.

[kelson42]

Test on a Andorid 6.0.1 device (Samsung):

• OI File Manager (works fine, after providing a choice of apps to use)
• Default "My Files" app (does not work "Unable to find application to perform this action")
• ES File Explorer (does not work, propose first to identify the type of the content [text, audio, video, ...] and then propose a list of app for each type - Kiwix is nowhere)

Test on a Android 4.2.2 device (Samsung):

• Default "My Files" (Does not work "Unable to find application to perform this action")

So, it seems that the association with "application/octet-stream" even does not always work.

[mhutti1]

@kelson42 This is not good. I have a bad feeling Samsung may be the issue here making it either impossible or requiring an even more cumbersome workaround.

[mhutti1]

@kelson42 Try now.

[kelson42]

@mhutti1 THX a lot, I'll do it tomorrow.

[kelson42]

Works perfectly with all of my tests. Kudos!