Implementing the Native Clipboard Framework in Android

Android has a powerful clipboard-based framework that supports text strings, complex data structures, text and binary stream data, application assets, and more. This framework also lets applications implement custom UIs for copying and pasting these types of data.

Simple text strings are stored directly in the clipboard, while complex data is copied as a reference that the pasting application resolves with a content provider. You can implement this framework in any Android application that supports copying and pasting.

The Android framework also provides several methods that allow you to read the contents of the clipboard. You can use these methods to retrieve text, image, and URI content.

You can also get a base64 string that has been encoded as a copy of the contents of the clipboard. This is useful when you need to handle the contents of the clipboard without encoding them, as well as for converting a string to a base64 image.

In addition, you can use the openTypedAssetFile method to read a file or a group of files that have been copied to the clipboard. This method doesn't filter for allowed MIME types, but it can read subsections of files.

Another option is to get the contents of the clipboard as a string by calling getStringAsync(string). This method also returns an image that has been encoded as a base64 string, but it can't handle MIME types that are not supported by the system.