I am porting some existing C code to run on Android. This C code writes lots of output to stdout/stderr. I need to capture this output, either in a memory buffer or a file, so I can then send it by email or otherwise share it.
How can I achieve this, ideally without modifying the existing C code?
Note: this question is NOT about redirecting the output to adb or logcat; I need to buffer the output locally on the device. I am aware of the following questions, which do not appear to address my query:
- Why is redirecting stdout/stderr on android not working?
- Android NDK Native LIB, What to do about existing stdio?
stdout is path 1 and stderr is path 2. Knowing this, you can establish new path(s) that you want to be the output destination, then coerce them into stdout and/or stderr. There's an example showing how to do this at practical examples use dup or dup2.
Use something like this to redirect stderr to a pipe. Have a reader on the other side of the pipe write to logcat:
extern "C" void Java_com_test_yourApp_yourJavaClass_nativePipeSTDERRToLogcat(JNIEnv* env, jclass cls, jobject obj)
{
int pipes[2];
pipe(pipes);
dup2(pipes[1], STDERR_FILENO);
FILE *inputFile = fdopen(pipes[0], "r");
char readBuffer[256];
while (1) {
fgets(readBuffer, sizeof(readBuffer), inputFile);
__android_log_write(2, "stderr", readBuffer);
}
}
You'll want to run this in its own thread. I spin up the thread in Java and then have the Java thread call this NDK code like this:
new Thread() {
public void run() {
nativePipeSTDERRToLogcat();
}
}.start();
I used the answer submitted by James Moore, but I wanted to be able to turn the logging on and off. With this I can set the mKeepRunning to false and it will shut down. I also needed to add the O_NONBLOCK flag to the file so it was no longer a blocking call.
int lWriteFD = dup(STDERR_FILENO);
if ( lWriteFD < 0 )
{
// WE failed to get our file descriptor
LOGE("Unable to get STDERR file descriptor.");
return;
}
int pipes[2];
pipe(pipes);
dup2(pipes[1], STDERR_FILENO);
FILE *inputFile = fdopen(pipes[0], "r");
close(pipes[1]);
int fd = fileno(inputFile);
int flags = fcntl(fd, F_GETFL, 0);
flags |= O_NONBLOCK;
fcntl(fd, F_SETFL, flags);
if ( nullptr == inputFile )
{
LOGE("Unable to get read pipe for STDERR");
return;
}
char readBuffer[256];
while (true == mKeepRunning)
{
fgets(readBuffer, sizeof(readBuffer), inputFile);
if ( strlen(readBuffer) == 0 )
{
sleep(1);
continue;
}
__android_log_write(ANDROID_LOG_ERROR, "stderr", readBuffer);
}
close(pipes[0]);
fclose(inputFile);