Android Drawable Images from URL

Bitmap is not a Drawable. If you really need a Drawable do this:

public static Drawable drawableFromUrl(String url) throws IOException {
    Bitmap x;

    HttpURLConnection connection = (HttpURLConnection) new URL(url).openConnection();
    connection.connect();
    InputStream input = connection.getInputStream();

    x = BitmapFactory.decodeStream(input);
    return new BitmapDrawable(Resources.getSystem(), x);
}

(I used the tip found in https://stackoverflow.com/a/2416360/450148)

Solved it myself. I loaded it in as a bitmap using the following code.

Bitmap drawable_from_url(String url) throws java.net.MalformedURLException, java.io.IOException {

    HttpURLConnection connection = (HttpURLConnection)new URL(url) .openConnection();
    connection.setRequestProperty("User-agent","Mozilla/4.0");

    connection.connect();
    InputStream input = connection.getInputStream();

    return BitmapFactory.decodeStream(input);
}

It was also important to add in the user agent, as googlebooks denies access if it is absent

I'm not sure, but I think that Drawable.createFromStream() is more intended for use with local files rather than downloaded InputStreams. Try using BitmapFactory.decodeStream(), then wrapping the return Bitmap in a BitmapDrawable.