Develop Reference

Problems sharing text with the new Android Studio

I have a simple app that will, at some point, generate a string of text that I want to share with any other app installed on the phone that can take a string of text (twitter, facebook, etc.)
Here's a sample of what I'm trying to do:
Intent sendIntent = new Intent();
sendIntent.setAction(Intent.ACTION_SEND);
sendIntent.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_TEXT, "This is my text to send.");
sendIntent.setType("text/plain");
startActivity(sendIntent);
This is from: https://developer.android.com/training/sharing/send.html#send-text-content
However, Android studio says it "cannot resolve" startActivity and suggests that I do this:
import static android.support.v4.app.ActivityCompat.startActivity;
Ok, so I do that and now startActivity() is expecting three inputs. This seems to be a new requirement because of an update. All the code examples I've seen only give it two inputs at most. The expectation is:
An activity???
The intent, which we defined
The bundle/extra options which I am leaving null
How do I satisfy the first input? Will it be possible to redirect back to my app after the sharing function is complete?

try this
Intent sharingIntent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_SEND);
sharingIntent.setType("text/plain");
sharingIntent.putExtra(android.content.Intent.EXTRA_TEXT, "This is my text");
sharingIntent.putExtra(android.content.Intent.EXTRA_SUBJECT, "This is the title");
startActivity(Intent.createChooser(sharingIntent, "Share using"));
setting title is not compulsory. then the "share using" is just a text which you can replace with anything you want. its just shows above all suggested application

How to set action, category and data for intent?

I'm programming an Android application. I want to invoke other applications to perform certain operations(Sending emails etc.) How do I know which action and category to set for the intent? Should I look other application's intent filter? What if that application is not open source?
Also, for the data or extra attribute, I don't know how the 3rd party application will handle my intent, so I do not know how to set the attributes. For example, I want one string as the title of the email, one string as the content of the email, and another string as the recipient, and a picture as the attachment. Can I include all these information in the intent? What if the 3rd party application don't provide any functionality to handle it?

Usually, for common tasks in Android there is a general Intent that you send on which other applications can register.
for example to share some text you would create an intent like:
Intent sendIntent = new Intent();
sendIntent.setAction(Intent.ACTION_SEND);
sendIntent.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_TEXT, "This is my text to send.");
sendIntent.setType("text/plain");
startActivity(Intent.createChooser(sendIntent, getResources().getText(R.string.send_to)));
will prompt android's native share dialog on which the user can choose how he wants to share it.
Specifically for email you would do something like:
Intent intent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_SENDTO, Uri.fromParts(
"mailto","email#domain.com", null));
intent.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_SUBJECT, "This is my email subject");
startActivity(Intent.createChooser(intent, "Email"));
Other examples may be to launch the default sms application:
Intent sendIntent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW);
sendIntent.setData(Uri.parse("sms:"));
sendIntent.putExtra("sms_body", getMessageBody());
Or open the phone's dialer:
Intent intent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_CALL);
intent.setData(Uri.parse("tel:"+number));
startActivity(intent);
You need to figure out what are the actions that you want to implement in your app and then figure out how to implement each of them.
You can find some more data here:
Android content sharing
Android intents - under the various intent actions

Try using category and actions in intent.
Intent mailIntent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_SEND);
mailIntent.setType("text/plain");
mailIntent.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_SUBJECT, "Reporting mail");
mailIntent.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_TEXT, "Some message");
mailIntent.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_EMAIL, "xxx#yyy.com");
startActivity(mailIntent);
this is an example for sending email. For further details refer http://developer.android.com/guide/components/intents-common.html

Google mobile compose page URL

I want to send a predifined google+ message via android, but I\m not sure I found the right URL for that. I found https://plus.google.com/app/plus/mp/430/#~loop:view=compose , but it's not setting my text. Is there actually another official app URL that could allow that? Twitter has the one bellow. 10x
Intent i = new Intent();
i.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_TEXT, msg);
i.setAction(Intent.ACTION_VIEW);
i.setData(Uri.parse("https://mobile.twitter.com/compose/tweet"));
ctx.startActivity(i);

You can share text and images on Google+ with the ACTION_SEND intent.
Example:
Intent shareIntent = new Intent();
shareIntent.setAction(Intent.ACTION_SEND);
shareIntent.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_TEXT, "Hello World!");
shareIntent.setType("text/plain");
startActivity(shareIntent);
If you would like to target the Google+ app directly, you can call setPackage on the shareIntent before calling startActivity.
shareIntent.setPackage("com.google.android.apps.plus");

How to know which application the user chose when using an intent chooser?

I'm using an intent chooser to invite friends :
Intent intent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_SEND);
intent.setType("text/plain");
intent.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_SUBJECT, Resources.getString("InvitationSubject", getBaseContext()));
String body = Resources.getString("InvitationBody", getBaseContext()) + Local.User.FirstName;
intent.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_TEXT, body);
startActivity(Intent.createChooser(intent, "Invite friends"));
Is there a way to know which app the user selected in the chooser ?

As far as I know, there is no direct way to gather such information. What would you need it for? Imho the android intent system was designed so you, as an app developer, don't have to worry about what app the user chose to handle your intent.

ACTION_SEND sending both an Image and Text in the same Intent

So I would like to do something like:
Intent intent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_SEND);
intent.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_STREAM, Uri.parse(myMessageAsImage));
intent.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_TEXT, "My Message");
intent.setType("text/plain"); // or intent.setType("image/<imageType>");
However the documentation for ACTION_SEND doesn't seem to make this seem possible. Is there an agreed upon way to do this?

I don't know what you mean by 'common way' but I think you should set the type to intent.setType("image/*");.
EDIT:
How you send data with intent depends on the availability of apps that filter your particular action. Apps that handle ACTION_SEND may not handle ACTION_SEND_MULTIPLE. Clicking Share on HTC Gallery produces a list of applications that handle image, single or multiple. If you choose Mail then you can select multiple images. But if you choose Facebook or Peep then you can only select one image. This is my simple solution if you want to do the reverse of HTC Gallery, that is: user chooses image(s) first then you show him all compatible apps based on how many he selected.
// assuming uris is a list of Uri
Intent intent = null;
if (uris.size > 1){
intent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_SEND_MULTIPLE);
intent.putParcelableArrayListExtra(Intent.EXTRA_STREAM, uris);
} else if (uris.size() == 1) {
intent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_SEND);
intent.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_STREAM, uris.get(0));}
intent.setType("image/*");
intent.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_TEXT, "Some message");
startActivity(Intent.createChooser(intent,"compatible apps:"));