Integrating existing android app into your app - android

I am very much new to android development!
I saw one existing application for android which will work as a first step in my app.
Actually a result of that application can be used as a input to my application.
But I don't know, is it possible to integrate existing application in your application?
If yes then definitely, that should be done only by having a code for that previous application, right???
If any one have any idea, what I am asking about, Please let me know. Thanks.

You can launch any Activity from your app but in order to get result from it, you need the developer of that activity to support it.

One example would be using "Barcode Scanner" app which is free and popular. Your app can use it by sending Intent asking to scan and return result instead of include the library into your app. Intent mechanism is Android way to do things.

Related

add another app inside my app?

my goal is to get a video from a usb connected device (an easycap video grabber) displayed. There is already an android app that does exactly that. However i need to add some buttons and some extra functions to it. So i came to the idea of displaying the app that already exists inside my app. Is that possible in any way?
I already tried to decompile the existing app to edit the code a bit but i didn't get anything to work with.
Do you have any other idea? If you know how to program that please let me know what i need to achieve that.
Thank you!
This cannot be done due to security reasons in the Android OS itself.
Android provides a security layer called the Sandbox in which the OS assigns a User ID for each app, so that an app will not have permission to access resources from another app.

How can I get information from another app

I am new to Andorid development.
I am trying to write a small application for Android device.
One thing that I want is to get information from another installed application.
EDIT:
I want my application to do A and B, and I found a application that already does part A,so what I am trying to do is to extend the functionality of the existing application
is there a generic way to retrieve information from another app?
#dprogramz gave a really good answer but to build on it you may want to take a look at startActivityForResult if you're looking to get a photo or use input from some external activity.
Documentation is here
What information?
If it is shared information that lives in a shared directory then it shouldn't be any problem at all.
If it is protected information you will have to give your app access to these files.
If it is "real-time" information you will have to invoke an API. take a look at the application class
http://developer.android.com/reference/android/app/Application.html
yes, there is a possibility to extend a app X with a feature A. You can add a new feature B to the app and make it more scalable and realiable,
only if-
Project is Open-Source:
You can contribute to the app via github and push changes.
If the owner likes it, you can be hire.
OR
Download the existing the project, make changes and upload it.

How to stop intercepting Zxing intents in my app?

I just emailed the dev and was asking him about this stuff.
Basically, I followed this:
http://damianflannery.wordpress.com/2011/06/13/integrate-zxing-barcode-scanner-into-your-android-app-natively-using-eclipse/
The person I'm working for isn't allowing me to use the Intent mechanism (same old reason.. can't make the users install another app), so I've to integrate the scanning functionality in my app.
I want to make sure that my app doesn't intercept intents for the QR Code scanner app. Right now, its doing that (in my Manifest..)
Do I need to rename the ZXing library project (and all of its packages)?
If I do need that, how would I do it? (Refactoring?)
Remember that I do need the QR scanning functionality from their library in my app.
Kindly help. I'm new :)
You remove <intent-filter> declarations that you are not using. Ideally don't use anything in our namespace -- nobody really should be in a third-party app.

Android launch app inside view

Alright so I have an app that I would like to have utilize other apps. For example I have an app that does quite a number of things except for a directory look up since there is already an app that does that for my school. I know I can launch the application with intents, but that also brings them away from the navigation menu for my application. Is there anyway that I could run an app inside a view layout. I am not hopeful for this but I figured I would chance asking it anyway.
This is technically possible by using widgets. You can implement an AppWidgetHost, and other applications can create App Widgets to use inside your own app. This is how the launcher screen in Android works.
This, of course, will only work if other applications in question implement widgets. So, the general answer to your question would be no, it is not possible to host arbitrary applications or Views/Activities from other applications inside your own.
This not the Android design philosophy. You should send an Intent to the directory app, which I hope is designed to look up a result and then return it to you. The mechanism is startActivityForResult() in your app, and setResult() in the directory app.

Is there Android Intent concept in iPhone SDK

Just switching from Android to iPhone. In Android I can make several apps and use a tabView to call each app as intent.
In iPhone, I can make several apps. I need a tab to call each apps or app views. Is there similar concept as intent in iPhone? Just switched to iPhone, copying all the other projects into the tabbar does not work out. If you have other methods to solve, I really appreciate. Thanks,
Android and iOS are very different in this regard. Android is very open about letting you use intents to mix and match activities from other apps. iOS isn't like that; each app runs in its own private space and generally cannot even see other apps' data, let alone use their services. It is possible to cause other apps to run via custom URLs, but that's not the same thing.
What you'll need to do is to copy or move the code for the view controllers, views, etc. of your various iOS apps into your tab bar app project. You'll build them all into a single application, and the tab bar will switch between the view controllers.
With iOS 8 you will have something similar to Android Intents. Using App Extensions you can reach similar behavior.
In a close future Apps will start expose their "extension" (as you do in Android Framework declaring Intent Filters in the manifest) that will be used by application who need.The extension areas allowed in this first version are:
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It's great finally apple release this functionality!
Intent in Android covers a lot of functions. There is no iOS equivalent to that.
But if your objective is to launch a different app, and pass parameters to it, you can try out URL Schema.
Let's say you have app AAA with URL schema aaa:// and app BBB with URL bbb://
You can launch app AAA, and call bbb://v=1&c=2 for example, to launch BBB and get the parameters. you can even take these parameters to control what view to show, so you can have a similar concept in Android, to call different Activity with Intents.
You have to register URL schema in Info.plist
The closest concept to an Intent on iOS is the handling of certain URLs by the system applications. See here. It was possible to register your own application URL schemes at one point (see this article), but I must admit I haven't tried this in recent SDKs (IIRC Glympse links can be opened in the Glympse app, so this technique probably still works).
As of 2016, Apple has added an Intents framework that is similar to Android's, albeit much more restrictive. Expect Apple to add more Intents in the future, but for now it is quite limited. https://developer.apple.com/reference/intents
Since iOS 8, you can use App Extensions.

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