title: How to access assets folder in my android app?
body: <p>I'm writing at a little project for a friend. A notecard application.
  My plan is to put the notecards in an xml format so i can import and export them easily.
  I located the xml files at the assets/xml/mynotecard.xml folder but i just can't manage to get access to this file. </p>
  
  <p>Whenever i try to interpret the xml file (will be put to it's on class later) i get the exception with: test.xml is not a file.
  This is an extract of my code:</p>
  
  <p>public class NotecardProActivity extends Activity {</p>
  
  <pre><code>List&lt;String&gt; xmlFiles;
  public ArrayList&lt;File&gt; xmlFileList;
  XMLInterpreter horst;
  
  
  /** Called when the activity is first created. */
  @Override
  public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
      super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
      setContentView(R.layout.main);
  
     final AssetManager mgr = getAssets();
  
  
      displayFiles(mgr, "",0); 
       xmlFiles = displayFiles(mgr, "xml",0); 
       for (int e = 0; e&lt;=xmlFiles.size()-1;e++)
       {
          Log.v("Inhalt List"+e+": ", xmlFiles.get(e));
       }     
  
      xmlFileList = new ArrayList&lt;File&gt;();
      for (int i = 0; i&lt;=xmlFiles.size()-1;i++)
      {
  
          xmlFileList.add(new File("./assets/xml/"+xmlFiles.get(i)));
      }
      for (int i = 0; i&lt;=xmlFileList.size()-1;i++)
      {
          Log.v("Name: ", xmlFileList.get(i).getName());
          Log.v("Filelocation: ",xmlFileList.get(i).getPath());
          Log.v("Filelocation: ",xmlFileList.get(i).getAbsolutePath());               
      }
      Log.v("DEBUG","XML FILE LISTE erfolgreich geschrieben!");
  
      //Alternative zum ausgelagerten XML INTERPRETER
      try
      {
      if(xmlFileList.get(0) == null){
          Log.v("Debug", "XMLFILE IS NULL");
      }
      else{
      DocumentBuilderFactory dbFactory = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
      DocumentBuilder dBuilder = dbFactory.newDocumentBuilder();
      Document doc = dBuilder.parse(xmlFileList.get(0));
      doc.getDocumentElement().normalize();
  
      Log.v("Root element :", doc.getDocumentElement().getNodeName());
      NodeList nList = doc.getElementsByTagName("notecard");
  
  
      for (int temp = 0; temp &lt; nList.getLength(); temp++) {
  
             Node nNode = nList.item(temp);
             if (nNode.getNodeType() == Node.ELEMENT_NODE) {
  
                Element eElement = (Element) nNode;    
                Log.v("GesetzesText: " , getTagValue("legal_text", eElement));
               // System.out.println("Kommentar : " + getTagValue("comment", eElement));                   
             }
          }
      }
      }
      catch (Exception e) {
          e.printStackTrace();
        }
  
      mgr.close();                
  }
  
  
  private List&lt;String&gt; displayFiles (AssetManager mgr, String path, int level) {
      List&lt;String&gt; abc = new ArrayList&lt;String&gt;();
      Log.v("Hello","enter displayFiles("+path+")");
     try {
         String list[] = mgr.list(path);
         abc.addAll(Arrays.asList(list));
          Log.v("Hello1","L"+level+": list:"+ Arrays.asList(list));
  
     } catch (IOException e) {
         Log.v("Fail","List error: can't list" + path);
     }
  return abc;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>}</p>
  
  <pre><code>private String getTagValue(String sTag, Element eElement) {
      NodeList nlList = eElement.getElementsByTagName(sTag).item(0).getChildNodes();
  
      Node nValue = (Node) nlList.item(0);
  
      return nValue.getNodeValue();
  }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>}</p>
  
  <p>Would be really awesome if you guys could help me :)</p>