Let's say I have an application with an activity which list a bunch of files. When the user touch one of this files an ACTION_VIEW intent with proper mimeType and stuff is triggered so Android will prompt the user to choose one of the video players installed in the system (or the one that's defaulted).
I'm wondering if there is a way of telling if the playback of the file itself succeded or not. Because if I detect there was an error I can recomend the user other players available on Google Play.
¿Does the default Android Video Player responds the intent with some data? ¿Is there some generalized, common or standard way to get this information?
Any data on the subject is appreciated.
Thanks in advance.
I'm wondering if there is a way of telling if the playback of the file itself succeded or not.
You can tell if there was any eligible activity for the ACTION_VIEW Intent, either by catching ActivityNotFoundException on your startActivity() call, or by calling queryIntentActivities() ahead of time and checking for an empty list.
Once control passes to the third-party activity, that activity is like Las Vegas: what happens in that activity stays in that activity. You have no way of knowing anything about what went on, in terms of "success" or "failure" or anything else.
Related
Suppose there are two apps on my device, GoodApp and EvilApp. I didn't write either of them. Both apps can use an ACTION_SEND Intent to start an exported activity in my app, passing data in. They both call startActivity, not startActivityForResult.
I want to trust the data I receive from GoodApp, but distrust and ignore the data I receive from EvilApp.
How can my Activity tell which app started it? Activity.getCallingActivity() returns null, because it wasn't started for-result. I can't send a message back to the apps asking "was it you who sent me this?" because they aren't written to respond to that, and their code is out of my control. Is there any way I can tell the difference?
Require apps use startActivityForResult in order for you to handle their request? (:
ActivityManager.getRunningTasks might give you a hint, but its documentation says not to use it for things like what you are asking.
Android's Intent class provides an API called setSelector. I am trying to understand it from the example given in the documentation.
I want to ask that why did Android need to add this API ? What was breaking in Intent before this API ?
My understanding from reading the references is that the problem this API is intending to solve is where you want to send a launcher intent for an app that meets some general restrictions. Say you want to match all apps that open .mp3 files, but you don't want to actually open an mp3 file, you just want to launch an app that supports that. In that case, you could create a generic ACTION_MAIN, CATEGORY_LAUNCHER intent, and set the selector to an intent with an mp3 mime type or data URI.
Before this API there would be no way to do that - if you wanted to target an app that supports opening mp3s, you would have to send an intent for an mp3, which could either cause music to start playing, or cause the music player to throw an error. Also, depending on the music player's launch mode, the launcher intent may return to an existing instance of the music player, while the mp3 intent might create a new one.
According to my understanding, it gives choice to user which intent he wants to select. In that documentation they have given that it gives selection of intents whether user wants to open app's main activity or wants to launch any diff app/activity other than user's app. This is what i understood from that documentation. Check this links for your reference : https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=67162 & http://grepcode.com/file/repository.grepcode.com/java/ext/com.google.android/android/4.4_r1/android/content/Intent.java#Intent.setSelector%28android.content.Intent%29
I've been searching and I couldn't find a topic that could clarify me 100%.
My question is: How can I launch an android's app preferences activity (from Contacts, Messages, ...) on my own app?
I give an example:
Imagine I'm developing an app which allows the user to quickly access to Message's Settings. I don't need to send or receive any information, I only need to open the activity, create a shortcut for it.
Someone knows if this can be done and even opening specific locations of the apps?
You don't need to know any specific locations or specific apps for these actions, simply look into Intent.ACTION_PICK.
Picking a Contact: get contact info from android contact picker
Picking a picture: How to pick an image from gallery (SD Card) for my app?
The best answer in this thread has the solution:
android: how do i open another app from my app?
Also check:
http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2009/01/can-i-use-this-intent.html
To open settings, you can try:
startActivityForResult(new Intent(android.provider.Settings.ACTION_SETTINGS, 0));
There is no difference in writing in code an Explicit Intent which will go to a specific activity of your app and using the same format to go to a specific activity some other app. A few things to be aware of: (1) The receiving activity may be expecting particular data and fail otherwise. (2) The standard apps you are considering like Contacts, Messages while you can find the source for them in the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) may be changed by the manufacturers so that the activity names and necessary extra data could be different.
In order to maintain as much compatibility between all of the different Android manufacturers, you should stick to the standard implicit intent with the appropriate action/data.
I can start my application by simply putting the phone on a NFC-tag. But I would like to take the idea one step further. Imagine a simple time-tracking application with two NFC-tags. The first will start (and download) the application and register a starttime. The other will also start (and download) the application, but register a stoptime.
My problem I'd like to solve is that I don't want my phone to know about these tags. The application should not need to have a list of tag-ids programmed and know what actions that is connected to each id. The tag should carry the information needed to start the action on the phone with the correct parameters.
Are there any information about how to accomplish this scenario? I have installed "nfc-eclipse-plugin" but doesn't understand how to use it to get my goal and even less how to get my application to read the extra data.
Thanks in advance
Roland
Your tags should be capable of storing NDEF messages. Such messages are automatically read out by Android and passed to your app in an Intent. Automatically installing and/or starting your app can be accomplished by putting an Android Application Record in your tag. Any additional information ("start" or "stop" indication) can be stored in a proprietary record.
You probably want to put the AAR as the last record of the NDEF message, as it is detected and acted upon by Android automatically, but is only supported since ICS. To make automatic installation work with Gingerbread, you can put an additional URI record or SmartPoster record with a Google Play Store link in it as the first record of the message. Your app should then filter (ACTION_NDEF_DISCOVERED) for this URI, so it will also start automatically on Gingerbread.
I have this piece of code
private void initiateInstallation() {
Intent intent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW);
Uri uri = Uri.fromFile(new File("/sdcard/example.apk"));
intent.setDataAndType(uri, "application/vnd.android.package-archive");
intent.setFlags(Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK);
startActivity(intent);
}
that from within my service installs an application named example.apk
I want after the installation is finished to run an activity which notifies the user about the installation.I did that except the activity appears before the installation finishes.
The problem is that within a service I cannot use startActivityForResult. So, I need a way around this so that I can start my notification activity(or for the sake of example just print something out with Toast within the service) only AFTER the installation is complete.
I already tried some answers from other questions like "alternative to startActivityforResult in services" but still I couldn't figure this out.
I also put the code so that maybe there may be something done in there.
Thanks in advance ... any suggestions are welcome.
You could listen to the PACKAGE_ADDED broadcast intent: http://developer.android.com/reference/android/content/Intent.html#ACTION_PACKAGE_ADDED
As far as I know, these are sent after the installation is done, and you can listen to those from the service.
Just note that if the application was already installed, you will get ACTION_PACKAGE_CHANGED (as far as I know).
Also you must know the package name as well, not just the apk name, since the intent will contain the package name.
The answer given by #Pal Szasz is technically correct (as far as I know ;-) ).
However, based on the information given in your question, I assume you only wish to show a notification (no further programmatically actions are to be performed). If my assumptions are correct I would respectfully advise you NOT to show such a notification. And this is why:
The Android system already has a standard means of passing notifications to the user. The status bar will in this case already show you a message saying that the new app is successfully installed (or not installed in case of an error). If you implement yet another notification channel you will most likely confuse or irritate your users by diverging from the standard, expected behaviour.
Taking this beyond the borders of sanity one could also argue for the fact that you in some sense also would contribute to the fragmentation of Android (in a very small scale, but nevertheless).