I need to allow user to draw/sketch/paint something. There are already many apps(like Skitch, I will use this as an example) that accomplish this task. So I don't want to re-invent the wheel.
In Android, theoretically, we can launch other activity by intent. This is sort of like "pipe" in Unix.
The problem is, I don't know how to get the information for launching Skitch.
To integrate Skitch in my app, I need to know the Action it supports, the returning intent (if any) when it finishes.
I installed Skitch, photoshop, and lots of other touch drawing apps in my device, but this code doesn't work :
Uri data = Uri.fromFile(file);
Intent i = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_EDIT);
i.setData(data);
i.setType("image/*");
startActivityForResult(i, ACTIVITY_DRAW);
I can launch Skitch from my app in the following way: but obviously I can't get any returned result this way(code from here).
Intent i = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_MAIN);
PackageManager manager = getPackageManager();
i = manager.getLaunchIntentForPackage("com.evernote.skitch");
i.addCategory(Intent.CATEGORY_LAUNCHER);
startActivity(i);
My question: Is there a standard way to find information for launching a third party app?
Is this site the only way to share/get such information?
Or if you have any suggestions for my problem, please help me.
Thank you!
As you might already know how to call another application Activity from your app ..this way Mentioned Here.
Intent intent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_RUN);
intent.setComponent(new ComponentName("<packet name>", "<class name>"));
List list = packageManager.queryIntentActivities(intent, packageManager.COMPONENT_ENABLED_STATE_DEFAULT);
if(list.size() > 0)
{
Log.i("Log", "Have application" + list.size());
startActivity(intent);
}
else
{
Log.i("Log", "None application");
}
All your require is Mainly Two Things to call any Activity
1) Package Name of that Activity
2) Activity Class Name
These two informations only can be available if they are opensource or made free to use .. like Zxing,Google Maps Application.
There is another way to start an application activity like,
Intent intent = new Intent();
intent.setAction(Intent.ACTION_CALL);
intent.setData(Uri.parse("tel:" + numberField.getText())); // set the Uri
startActivity(intent);
For this way to use need to know the correct Action for the Activity you want to call and the Correct parameter to pass with.
And again,These information only can be available if they are opensource or made free to use .. like Facebook and Gmail apps to share and post messages.
So If you are searching for anything like which can tell you what you will need to pass to call any specific comercial apps in your device, you wont find it directly.
It's an old question but perhaps it could help somebody to know that Sony's AppXplore application (free) shows the package and name of the activities of every app installed on your device, so you can eventually use them to do explicit Intents.
Related
I am looking for a way to create shortcuts from other apps.
Like launchs can query the apps that allow to create shortcuts and create them save them in thier program.
My API version is between M(21) to N7.1(25).
Even just a link or name of API it's fine. I just couldn't find it at all. All I found is about the new shortcut in android N.
Thx for ur time.
I found the way to do it. Since i don't see much info for this. I hope my share can help whoever is also looking for the answer.
So there will be 3 steps:
Get apps that can create shortcuts
Send Intent to the app that you want to create shortcut from
Get shortcut data in Activity.onActivityResult
1.
Since I just need to create shortcuts from certain apps. I skipped step one. But I guess using queryIntentActivities(...) or some other functions in PackageManager can get you the list.
Intent intent = new Intent("android.intent.action.CREATE_SHORTCUT");
PackageManager.queryIntentActitvies(intent,0);
2. Send intent to the app to create a shortcut.
Intent intent = new Intent("android.intent.action.CREATE_SHORTCUT");
intent.setComponent(...);
startActivityForResult(intent, requestCode);
3. Get data of shortcut:
Shortcut intent
Intent shortcutIntent = activityResultIntent.getParcelableExtra(Intent.EXTRA_SHORTCUT_INTENT);
Shortcut name
String shortcutName = intent.getStringExtra(Intent.EXTRA_SHORTCUT_NAME);
Shortcut icon
Bitmap shortcutIcon = intent.getParcelableExtra(Intent.EXTRA_SHORTCUT_ICON);
I tried to start the Wikipedia App via Intent but I always get an InvocationTargetException, because the Activity can't be found. I can detect that Wikipedia is installed, but I can't start it. I know that I can also use the Intent Filter and call the Wikipedia URL, but then the user can decide between app and browser (both works different with the search param, which is not very useful) and I want to decide it for the user.
I tried it with following code:
final Intent intent = new Intent();
intent.setAction(Intent.ACTION_SEND);
intent.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_TEXT, "searchString");
intent.setType("text/plain");
intent.setPackage("org.wikipedia");
Can somebody tell me, what I am doing wrong there or is it just not possible to start the wikipedia app? :-/
Finally I come to a solution after I was looking in the wikipedia code on github (https://github.com/wikimedia/apps-android-wikipedia). The app listens only for View Intents, which means that following code works:
final Intent intent = new Intent();
intent.setAction(Intent.ACTION_VIEW);
intent.setData(searchUri);
intent.setPackage("org.wikipedia");
The problem here is, that only URI's for existing articles were handled and no search operation can be used. After watching a little bit more in the code, I found a PageActivity which also listens for ACTION_SEARCH Intents. This would work, when in the AndroidManifest.xml this Intent Filter would be also available.
I have an android application that requires VPN. My users will be using Galaxy Note 3's and will be using the built in "VPN Client" (com.ipsec.vpnclient). I need to find a way to launch this application from my application, in the instance of the VPN dropping. I've already figured out a way to determine if the VPN dropped, but I still need a way to launch the application.
ANSWER:
Thanks to help from #Muthu I was able to get it working with the following method.
final Intent intent = new Intent("android.intent.action.VIEW");
intent.setComponent(new ComponentName("com.ipsec.vpnclient", "com.ipsec.vpnclient.MainActivity"));
EDIT:
To add to the confusion, I am easily able to add a shortcut to the activity (com.ipsec.vpnclient.MainActivity) via another Launcher like ADW or Nova. I also tried using com.ipsec.vpnclient.MainActivity instead of com.ipsec.vpnclient in the method below, to no avail.
Intent intent = getPackageManager().getLaunchIntentForPackage("com.ipsec.vpnclient");
intent.addFlags(Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK);
startActivity(intent);
The above method works with other packages, but I can't seem to get this one to launch.
Here is the application when viewed in Android System Info.
Any ideas on how to launch this application programmatically?
You can Start any installed application by using intent. in your case like this
Intent LaunchVPN = getPackageManager().getLaunchIntentForPackage("com.ipsec.vpnclient");
startActivity( LaunchVPN );
Edit
You can open pre installed apps that can be found inside settings page by
final Intent i = new Intent("android.intent.action.VIEW");
i.setComponent(new ComponentName("com.android.settings","com.android.settings.InstalledAppDetails"));
startActivity(i);
I'm working on an app and I want to integrate the Last.fm app into it. Basically, when someone is looking at an artist in my app, I would like to have a button that they can tap to open up Last.fm application with the artist's information.
This intent works, but it loads a menu asking which app I would like to use (Browser or Last.fm):
Intent i = new Intent();
i.setData(Uri.parse("http://last.fm/music/" + headliner));
i.setAction("android.intent.action.VIEW");
startActivity(i);
However, I just want to start the Last.fm app and skip the dialog asking which app to use, I thought maybe using the setPackage() method would work like this:
i.setPackage("fm.last.android");
But it causes the app to crash:
android.content.ActivityNotFoundException: No Activity found to handle Intent { act=android.intent.action.VIEW dat=http://last.fm/music/Rihanna pkg=fm.last.android }
Is it possible to just start the Last.fm app? Here's a copy of Last.fm's AndroidManifest.xml for reference.
Thanks for reading,
Tony
Yes, it's possible but you need to know the correct component name. Launch the last.fm app regularly and check the logfile for the cmp=... information that's been used when the app is started. Use this as well in your app then.
I start the Z-DeviceTest app from the market from within my app without a problem like this:
final Intent intentDeviceTest = new Intent("android.intent.action.MAIN");
intentDeviceTest.setComponent(new ComponentName("zausan.zdevicetest","zausan.zdevicetest.zdevicetest"));
startActivity(intentDeviceTest);
in my case the info I took from the logcat was:
// dat=content://applications/applications/zausan.zdevicetest/zausan.zdevicetest.zdevicetest
// cmp=zausan.zdevicetest/.zdevicetest
in order to know how to start the app with the right component/class... do the same for the last.fm app
Edit:
I've tested to launch Last.fm from my own app, and this works fine without any errors:
final Intent intentDeviceTest = new Intent("android.intent.action.MAIN");
intentDeviceTest.setComponent(new ComponentName("fm.last.android","fm.last.android.LastFm"));
startActivity(intentDeviceTest);
I would like to launch an app the user selects from within my application. However, I'm not sure how I'd go about doing this. I've tried this:
Intent intent = new Intent();
intent.setAction(Contacts.Intents.SHOW_OR_CREATE_CONTACT);
startActivity(intent);
But this seems to throw an error and force close my application. I also tried adding:
<action android:name="Contacts.Intents.SHOW_OR_CREATE_CONTACT"/>
in the AndroidManifest file, but to no avail.
A look at Logcat shows that it's an "IOexception - no such file or directory". A couple of questions arise from this. I read through the Android docs and noticed that the Contact.Intents class is deprecated. However, it's successor, ContactContracts is aimed at API level 5 whereas I'm targeting API level 3. Could this be the problem? Also, I've hardcoded this application into the code. Is there a way to retrieve the intents of any application the user selects so that they can be launched?
You need to pass extra information into the intent to tell Android what you want to show or create. Otherwise Android doesn't know what activity to start and (presumably in your case) throws an ActivityNotFoundException.
For a contact, you use the generic Intent.ACTION_INSERT_OR_EDIT then use the MIME type of an individual contact (Contacts.People.CONTENT_ITEM_TYPE).
For example:
Intent intent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_INSERT_OR_EDIT);
intent.setType(People.CONTENT_ITEM_TYPE);
intent.putExtra(Contacts.Intents.Insert.PHONE, "+1234567890");
intent.putExtra(Contacts.Intents.Insert.PHONE_TYPE, Contacts.PhonesColumns.TYPE_MOBILE);
That will bring up the contacts app, prompting you to select an existing contact to add the phone number to, or to create a new contact.
You don't need to add anything special to your manifest to start external activities. Only if you were to directly manipulate the contacts ContentProvider would you need to add the appropriate CONTACT permissions to your manifest.
I use this code for that purpose:
Intent intent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_MAIN);
intent.setClassName("com.android.settings", "com.android.settings.Settings");
startActivity(intent);
This will launch the Settings app, you can use these also:
intent.setClassName("com.android.music", "com.android.music.MediaPlaybackActivityStarter");
intent.setClassName("com.android.contacts", "com.android.contacts.DialtactsContactsEntryActivity");
intent.setClassName("com.android.contacts", "com.android.contacts.DialtactsActivity");
The first starts the default music app, the second the contacts, and the third the dialer.
Hope this helps.
You need to pass in valid arguments to the apps you start. A lot of apps expect the data URI and / or certain extras to be valid.
Please try the following code:
Intent intent = new Intent(Contacts.Intents.SHOW_OR_CREATE_CONTACT);
this.startActivity(intent);
(sorry if there is something wrong on the syntax, I dont have android in this computer)
And remove the action from the manifest. that is not needed.
The action method is used for something else.
For more info, please look at the android site: http://developer.android.com/reference/android/content/Intent.html
Daniel
The activity you are calling should appear not only in the Manifest for its own package, but in the Manifest for the CALLING package, too.