Develop Reference

Duplicate App Listing in Intent Chooser

I seem to be doing something wrong with deep linking in my app. I have two activities: a post viewer which views posts on a site, and a profile viewer which views a users profile. Below is my code that I've set up following Google's guide to deep linking.
Profile Activity Manifest Declaration
<activity
android:name=".ui.activity.ProfileActivity"
android:parentActivityName=".ui.activity.MainActivity">
<intent-filter>
<action android:name="android.intent.action.VIEW" />
<category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT" />
<category android:name="android.intent.category.BROWSABLE" />
<data
android:host="gab.ai"
android:pathPattern="/..*"
android:scheme="https" />
</intent-filter>
</activity>
Post Viewer Activity Manifest Declaration
<activity
android:name=".ui.activity.PostViewerActivity"
android:parentActivityName=".ui.activity.MainActivity">
<intent-filter>
<action android:name="android.intent.action.VIEW" />
<category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT" />
<category android:name="android.intent.category.BROWSABLE" />
<data
android:host="gab.ai"
android:pathPattern="/..*/posts/..*"
android:scheme="https" />
</intent-filter>
</activity>
I've left out the intent handling code because it is redundant. The deep links work properly, except for a weird issue when opening URLs that direct to the post viewer activity.
This works perfectly. Tapping a link such as https://url/.. opens the dialog and lists only one option When selecting the app, it opens the proper activity perfectly.
Here's where it gets weird. When clicking a URL such as https://url/../posts/.. the Android System sees both activity deep links as feasible. My question is how do I get around this? Changing the URL scheme is out, and I'm not fluent enough about deep links to figure out a workaround.

In ProfileActivity android:pathPattern="/..*" equals to /..*/posts/..* because an asterisk ('*') matches a sequence of 0 to many occurrences of the immediately preceding character. Try to use escape character \ as explained in docs

Launching custom Android application from Android browser / Chrome

First of all, my question is extremely similar to this, this and this. The Android documentation for what I'm trying to achieve is here. I couldn't get this to work using these resources so please don't mark this as duplicate as it is not.
I have a website and an Android application. The user will be able to scan QR codes that contain links like http://mywebsite.com/map/. When the user tries to open this link, I want Android to show him a chooser dialog where he can choose to open that link using my application. If my application is not installed, it should proceed to the specified website.
I know Chrome allows this by opening the chooser dialog when the user navigates to that address. For example, try downloading the Stack Exchange app and going to this question in Chrome. It will show this:
I have added the following code in AndroidManifest.xml after following the suggestion in the above-mentioned answers:
<intent-filter>
<action android:name="android.intent.action.VIEW" />
<action android:name="android.intent.action.SEND" />
<category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT" />
<category android:name="android.intent.category.BROWSABLE" />
<data
android:host="mywebsite.com"
android:path="/map"
android:scheme="http" />
<data
android:host="mywebsite.com"
android:path="/animals"
android:scheme="http" />
<data
android:host="mywebsite.com"
android:path="/articles"
android:scheme="http" />
</intent-filter>
Also, I have tried adding android:mimeType="text/plain" to data but it didn't help.
The problem is that when I go to http://mywebsite.com/map or http://mywebsite.com/map/ Chrome just opens the webpage without showing the chooser dialog.
I would like to mention:
following the Android documentation, I have added this code inside one of the activity structures in AndroidManifest.xml. As I am not sure this is the perfect place to add it, I have also tried adding it outside the application structure and directly inside the application structure but it didn't work
this is the only code I have implemented for this to work. If something else is needed please let me know. From what I understand, adding a href to the webpage is only needed when using custom schemas
I do not want to use a custom schema in order to achieve this
I am developing on a Nexus 4, running Android 4.4.2 (latest)

You need to set it up like this :
<intent-filter>
<action android:name="android.intent.action.VIEW" />
<category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT" />
<category android:name="android.intent.category.BROWSABLE" />
<data
android:host="example.com"
android:pathPrefix="/someresource/"
android:scheme="http" />
<data
android:host="www.example.com"
android:pathPrefix="/someresource/"
android:scheme="http" />
</intent-filter>
Notice that in your case, you would need to use android:pathPrefix instead of android:path.

Just to be sure, you should reset the preferences for your app in case you have accidentally set it to always open the link in chrome rather than show the chooser dialog. Once "Always" is used to open the matching uri, it will never show the chooser.
Second, you can have as many data elements in the intent filter as your want, but it is not necessary to repeat information. You can do the same thing like this:
<data android:host="mywebsite.com"/>
<data android:scheme="http"/>
<data android:path="/map"/>
<data android:path="/animals"/>
<data android:path="/articles"/>
But note that for the path, you can just use a wildcard
<data android:path="/.*"/>
Consider adding an additional
<data android:host="www.mywebsite.com"/>
And finally you may not want to show the chooser dialog but open a specific app intent/activity directly. On your website, if you detect the android user agent, you can create a link url this way:
<a href="intent://mywebsite.com/articles#Intent;package=com.myapp;scheme=http;end;"/>
See here for more details How do I open any app from my web browser (Chrome) in Android? What do I have to do with the A Href link?
Note that with this method if the app is not installed the user will be taken to the Google Play store for the specified app package.
If you are still having problems, check your intent filter priority. http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/manifest/intent-filter-element.html

In my case site URL is: http://www.example.org/mobile/
so putting these code into AndroidManifest.xml inside activity
<intent-filter>
<action android:name="android.intent.action.VIEW" />
<category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT" />
<category android:name="android.intent.category.BROWSABLE" />
<data
android:host="www.example.org"
android:pathPrefix="/mobile/"
android:scheme="http" />
</intent-filter>
Here,
scheme -> Protocol of particular site
host-> Exact site url with WWW
pathprefix - > Your site's sub path if available
Now,
You can search with chrome / etc android browser'search box like example then open chosen dialog ..!!

How do I get a domain link to open my app on android?

The following works fine:
I click on the link www.mycompany.com in an email and it starts my app:
<intent-filter>
<action android:name="android.intent.action.VIEW" />
<category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT" />
<category android:name="android.intent.category.BROWSABLE"/>
<data android:host="www.mycompany.com/download" android:scheme="http"/>
</intent-filter>
However, what I want to work is as below but it's not working:
I want to be able to restrict it to the link www.mycompany.com/download:
<intent-filter>
<action android:name="android.intent.action.VIEW" />
<category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT"/>
<category android:name="android.intent.category.BROWSABLE" />
<data android:host="www.mycompany.com/download" android:scheme="http" />
</intent-filter>
Why the distinction? I don't want to block my entire website with the app. I just want that specific domain to redirect to the app. How do I do that?

What you've shown is not a subdomain. That is,
www.mycompany.com/download
is not a subdomain of
www.mycompany.com
But you could use a subdomain to address this issue by setting up something like
download.mycompany.com
and have it map to www.mycompany.com/download. (Most servers allow you to set up subdomains like that.) You can then modify the intent filter accordingly.
EDIT
To support what you're trying to do without setting up a subdomain, you can do the following:
<data
android:host="www.mycompany.com"
android:scheme="http"
android:pathPrefix="download"
/>

I would suggest you to try latest feature made available by Google and that is App-indexing to show your app even when user search about your website on Google.
You need to go through 2 steps:
1 Sign Up for this feature here
2 Update your app as well as sitemap of your website as mentioned here
For further reference you can go through this documentation
Screenshot :

Android Custom URL Scheme for different apps

I would like to create a series of apps that will be opened via URL scheme. What I would like to do is to use the same base scheme for all of them but be able to specify which app to open... somthing like this:
myApp://open?appUrl="app1" -> open first app
myApp://open?appUrl="app2" -> open second app
etc...
Is it possible?
THX

You can do it using <intent-filter> in your <activity>:
<activity android:name=".activity.Activity">
<intent-filter>
<action android:name="android.intent.action.VIEW" />
<category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT" />
<category android:name="android.intent.category.BROWSABLE" />
<data android:scheme="myApp" />
<data android:host="app1" />
</intent-filter>
</activity>
this should work for myApp://app1, I am not sure if intent-filter can parse more complicated URLs like open?appUrl="app1"

Yes this is possible. You'll need to specify the URL scheme within the corresponding BroadcastReceiver of your apps.

Android: using intent filter to launch app doesn't work

I know this question is asked and answered many times on SO, but I just couldn't get it to work. Here is my manifest file (I have 3 activities, I'm showing the only one that I want to be displayed when associated):
<activity
android:name=".MyActivity"
android:label="#string/app_name"
android:theme="#style/HoloDarkTheme" >
<intent-filter>
<action android:name="android.intent.action.VIEW" />
<action android:name="android.intent.action.ACTION_SEND" />
<action android:name="android.intent.action.EXTRA_TEXT" />
</intent-filter>
<intent-filter>
<action android:name="android.intent.action.VIEW" />
<category android:name="android.intent.action.BROWSABLE" />
<category android:name="android.intent.action.DEFAULT" />
<data android:scheme="http" />
<data android:host="example.com" />
</intent-filter>
</activity>
When I launch a browser and go to "example.com", my app isn't launched. Is there something wrong with the above XML?
Not sure if relevant, but this activity uses MediaPlayer to play videos. Also, I'm using SDK version 11.

I figured it out. It's simply a case of typo. Instead of this,
<action android:name="android.intent.action.VIEW" />
<category android:name="android.intent.action.BROWSABLE" />
<category android:name="android.intent.action.DEFAULT" />
I needed to replace "android.intent.action" with "android.intent.category" in the last two lines:
<action android:name="android.intent.action.VIEW" />
<category android:name="android.intent.category.BROWSABLE" />
<category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT" />

I'm adding this answer here because this thread is one of the top hits when googling "intent filter to launch app from http not working". I suppose the root cause for me could also be considered a typo, but I'm going to call it an "Android documentation defect".
There's a line way toward the bottom of this page that breaks down a URI as:
<scheme>://<host>:<port>/<path>
This breakdown indicates that the "://", ":" and "/" will be added for me so I used the following data in my intent-filter:
<data android:scheme="http" />
<data android:host="my.school.edu" />
<data android:path="thingy" />
I then sent myself an SMS with the following text: "my.school.edu/thingy", which was recognized by my SMS client (Hangouts) as a web address, so it made it clickable. However, clicking on it just gave me a choice of browsers, my app was a no-show.
So I removed the host and the path, and my app launched for any link (or at least every one I tried). I put the host back in and it still worked. Put the path back and we're back to not working. On a whim I decided to prepend a slash to the path:
<data android:path="/thingy" />
...et voilà! There's my app in amongst the browsers! So the error in my view is Android's doc that suggests that the slash is inserted automagically. :) It apparently is not.
More Info: I'm using the HTTP scheme because that's what gets made clickable in SMS and email messages, giving me a free ride to that point.
And note that if you specify a unique host (and path), and the user selects "Always" when choosing your app from the list, future taps on your link will bypass that choice dialog and go straight to your app, which is nice.

Make sure you have the internet permission in your manifest.

I doubt that you can override the http scheme to point back to your app.