Can anybody please guide me regarding how to launch my android application from the android browser?
Use an <intent-filter> with a <data> element. For example, to handle all links to twitter.com, you'd put this inside your <activity> in your AndroidManifest.xml:
<intent-filter>
<data android:scheme="http" android:host="twitter.com"/>
<action android:name="android.intent.action.VIEW" />
</intent-filter>
Then, when the user clicks on a link to twitter in the browser, they will be asked what application to use in order to complete the action: the browser or your application.
Of course, if you want to provide tight integration between your website and your app, you can define your own scheme:
<intent-filter>
<data android:scheme="my.special.scheme" />
<action android:name="android.intent.action.VIEW" />
</intent-filter>
Then, in your web app you can put links like:
<a href="my.special.scheme://other/parameters/here">
And when the user clicks it, your app will be launched automatically (because it will probably be the only one that can handle my.special.scheme:// type of uris). The only downside to this is that if the user doesn't have the app installed, they'll get a nasty error. And I'm not sure there's any way to check.
Edit: To answer your question, you can use getIntent().getData() which returns a Uri object. You can then use Uri.* methods to extract the data you need. For example, let's say the user clicked on a link to http://twitter.com/status/1234:
Uri data = getIntent().getData();
String scheme = data.getScheme(); // "http"
String host = data.getHost(); // "twitter.com"
List<String> params = data.getPathSegments();
String first = params.get(0); // "status"
String second = params.get(1); // "1234"
You can do the above anywhere in your Activity, but you're probably going to want to do it in onCreate(). You can also use params.size() to get the number of path segments in the Uri. Look to javadoc or the android developer website for other Uri methods you can use to extract specific parts.
All above answers didn't work for me with CHROME as of 28 Jan 2014
my App launched properly from http://example.com/someresource/ links from apps like hangouts, gmail etc but not from within chrome browser.
to solve this, so that it launches properly from CHROME you have to set intent filter 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>
note the pathPrefix element
your app will now appear inside activity picker whenever user requests http://example.com/someresource/ pattern from chrome browser by clicking a link from google search results or any other website
Please see my comment here: Make a link in the Android browser start up my app?
We strongly discourage people from using their own schemes, unless they are defining a new world-wide internet scheme.
In my case I had to set two categories for the <intent-filter> and then it worked:
<intent-filter>
<data android:scheme="my.special.scheme" />
<action android:name="android.intent.action.VIEW" />
<category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT"/>
<category android:name="android.intent.category.BROWSABLE"/>
</intent-filter>
For example, You have next things:
A link to open your app: http://example.com
The package name of your app: com.example.mypackage
Then you need to do next:
Add an intent filter to your Activity
(Can be any activity you want. For more info check the documentation).
<activity
android:name=".MainActivity">
<intent-filter android:label="#string/filter_title_view_app_from_web">
<action android:name="android.intent.action.VIEW" />
<category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT" />
<category android:name="android.intent.category.BROWSABLE" />
<!-- Accepts URIs that begin with "http://example.com" -->
<data
android:host="example.com"
android:scheme="http" />
</intent-filter>
<intent-filter>
<action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN" />
<category android:name="android.intent.category.LAUNCHER" />
</intent-filter>
</activity>
Create a HTML file to test the link or use this methods.
Open your Activity directly (just open your Activity, without a choosing dialog).
Open this link with browser or your programm (by choosing dialog).
Use Mobile Chrome to test
That's it.
And its not necessary to publish app in market to test deep linking =)
Also, for more information, check documentation and useful presentation.
There should also be <category android:name="android.intent.category.BROWSABLE"/> added to the intent filter to make the activity recognized properly from the link.
The following link gives information on launching the app (if installed) directly from browser. Otherwise it directly opens up the app in play store so that user can seamlessly download.
https://developer.chrome.com/multidevice/android/intents
Please note if your icon is disappear from android launcher when you implement this feature, than you have to split intent-filter.
<activity
android:name=".MainActivity"
android:label="#string/app_name" >
<intent-filter>
<action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN" />
<category android:name="android.intent.category.LAUNCHER" />
</intent-filter>
<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="your-own-uri" />
</intent-filter>
</activity>
Yeah, Chrome searches instead of looking for scheme. If you want to launch your App through URI scheme, use this cool utility App on the Play store. It saved my day :)
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.naosim.urlschemesender
Xamarin port of Felix's answer
In your MainActivity, add this (docs: Android.App.IntentFilterAttribute Class):
....
[IntentFilter(new[] {
Intent.ActionView },
Categories = new[] { Intent.CategoryDefault, Intent.CategoryBrowsable },
DataScheme = "my.special.scheme")
]
public class MainActivity : Activity
{
....
Xamarin will add following in the AndroidManifest.xml for you:
<activity
android:label="Something"
android:screenOrientation="portrait"
android:theme="#style/MyTheme"
android:name="blah.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:scheme="my.special.scheme" />
</intent-filter>
</activity>
And in order to get params (I tested in OnCreate of MainActivity):
var data = Intent.Data;
if (data != null)
{
var scheme = data.Scheme;
var host = data.Host;
var args = data.PathSegments;
if (args.Count > 0)
{
var first = args[0];
var second = args[1];
...
}
}
As far as I know, above can be added in any activity, not only MainActivity
Notes:
When user click on the link, Android OS relaunch your app (kill prev instance, if any, and run new one), means the OnCreate event of app's MainLauncher Activity will be fired again.
With this link: <a href="my.special.scheme://host/arg1/arg2">, in above last code snippet values will be:
scheme: my.special.scheme
host: host
args: ["arg1", "arg2"]
first: arg1
second: arg2
Update: if android creates new instance of your app, you should add android:launchMode="singleTask" too.
Felix's approach to handling deep links is the typical approach to handling deep links. I would also suggest checking out this library to handle the routing and parsing of your deep links:
https://github.com/airbnb/DeepLinkDispatch
You can use annotations to register your Activity for a particular deep link URI, and it will extract out the parameters for you without having to do the usual rigmarole of getting the path segments, matching it, etc. You could simply annotate and activity like this:
#DeepLink("somePath/{someParameter1}/{someParameter2}")
public class MainActivity extends Activity {
...
}
Hey I got the solution. I did not set the category as "Default". Also I was using the Main activity for the intent Data. Now i am using a different activity for the intent data. Thanks for the help. :)
You need to add a pseudo-hostname to the CALLBACK_URL 'app://' doesn't make sense as a URL and cannot be parsed.
example.php:
<?php
if(!isset($_GET['app_link'])){ ?>
<iframe src="example.php?app_link=YourApp://blabla" style="display:none;" scrolling="no" frameborder="0"></iframe>
<iframe src="example.php?full_link=http://play.google.com/xyz" style="display:none;" scrolling="no" frameborder="0"></iframe>
<?php
}
else { ?>
<script type="text/javascript">
self.window.location = '<?php echo $_GET['app_link'];?>';
window.parent.location.href = '<?php echo $_GET['full_link'];?>';
</script>
<?php
}
Look #JRuns answer in here. The idea is to create html with your custom scheme and upload it somewhere. Then if you click on your custom link on your html-file, you will be redirected to your app. I used this article for android. But dont forget to set full name Name = "MyApp.Mobile.Droid.MainActivity" attribute to your target activity.
As of 15/06/2019
what I did is include all four possibilities to open url.
i.e, with http / https and 2 with www in prefix and 2 without www
and by using this my app launches automatically now without asking me to choose a browser and other option.
<intent-filter android:autoVerify="true">
<action android:name="android.intent.action.VIEW" />
<category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT" />
<category android:name="android.intent.category.BROWSABLE" />
<data android:scheme="https" android:host="example.in" />
<data android:scheme="https" android:host="www.example.in" />
<data android:scheme="http" android:host="example.in" />
<data android:scheme="http" android:host="www.example.in" />
</intent-filter>
Related
I am attempting to get the Android application chooser to launch when a specific URL is clicked from within a registration e-mail. I have already looked at the below question and several others but I am still having no luck with this.
Launching Android Application from link or email
I have created my intent in the AndroidManifest.xml file as below (I've placed my website address where you see ".website.org"):
<activity android:name=".MainActivity" android:configChanges="orientation|screenSize">
<intent-filter>
<action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN" />
<category android:name="android.intent.category.LAUNCHER" />
</intent-filter>
<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="https"
android:host="*.website.org"
android:path="/" />
</intent-filter>
</activity>
Is anyone able to assist me with what else I may be missing, as this is currently not launching anything and it's just loading the link directly in the default web browser?
You achieve this by Deep linking in your app.
First of all you need to add intent filters for incoming links.
<action>
Specify the ACTION_VIEW intent action so that the intent filter can be
reached from Google Search.
<data>
Add one or more tags, each of which represents a URI format
that resolves to the activity. At minimum, the tag must include
the android:scheme attribute.
You can add more attributes to further
refine the type of URI that the activity accepts. For example, you
might have multiple activities that accept similar URIs, but which
differ simply based on the path name. In this case, use the
android:path attribute or its pathPattern or pathPrefix variants to
differentiate which activity the system should open for different URI
paths.
<category>
Include the BROWSABLE category. It is required in order for the intent
filter to be accessible from a web browser. Without it, clicking a
link in a browser cannot resolve to your app.
Also include the DEFAULT
category. This allows your app to respond to implicit intents. Without
this, the activity can be started only if the intent specifies your
app component name.
I have used this url for launch my app “http://www.example.com/gizmos”
Look at the my Manifest.xml file,
<activity
android:name="com.example.android.GizmosActivity"
android:label="#string/title_gizmos" >
<intent-filter android:label="#string/filter_view_http_gizmos">
<action android:name="android.intent.action.VIEW" />
<category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT" />
<category android:name="android.intent.category.BROWSABLE" />
<!-- Accepts URIs that begin with "http://www.example.com/gizmos” -->
<data android:scheme="http"
android:host="www.example.com"
android:pathPrefix="/gizmos" />
<!-- note that the leading "/" is required for pathPrefix-->
</intent-filter>
<intent-filter android:label="#string/filter_view_example_gizmos">
<action android:name="android.intent.action.VIEW" />
<category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT" />
<category android:name="android.intent.category.BROWSABLE" />
<!-- Accepts URIs that begin with "example://gizmos” -->
<data android:scheme="example"
android:host="gizmos" />
</intent-filter>
</activity>
And notice that the two intent filters only differ by the <data> element.
<intent-filter>
...
<data android:scheme="https" android:host="www.example.com" />
<data android:scheme="app" android:host="open.my.app" />
</intent-filter>
It might seem as though this supports only https://www.example.com and
app://open.my.app. However, it actually supports those two, plus
these: app://www.example.com and https://open.my.app.
Read data from incoming intents
#Override
public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
setContentView(R.layout.main);
Intent intent = getIntent();
String action = intent.getAction();
Uri data = intent.getData();
}
Test your deep links
The general syntax for testing an intent filter URI with adb is:
$ adb shell am start
-W -a android.intent.action.VIEW
-d <URI> <PACKAGE>
For example, the command below tries to view a target app activity that is associated with the specified URI.
$ adb shell am start
-W -a android.intent.action.VIEW
-d "example://gizmos" com.example.android
Thanks for your replies. In the end I had to change my intent to the below and it had the desired result. When I click the URL specified in my intent the application chooser pops up allowing me to load the link in my app.
Just as info for anyone struggling as I did, you do not need to read data from incoming intents for the application chooser to launch, all you need is the below in your AndroidManifest file.
<intent-filter android:autoVerify="true">
<action android:name="android.intent.action.VIEW" />
<category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT" />
<category android:name="android.intent.category.BROWSABLE" />
<data android:scheme="http" />
<data android:scheme="https" />
<data android:host=".website.com" />
</intent-filter>
Thanks All.
First of All try to write the whole path for the Url in
android:host"https://www.google.com"
And next please check that you have not opted for default browser for link in android device.
Remove any default for link if any and try again.
Android studio made this task very easy they introduced App Links Assistant in Android Studio 2.3 -. It does every thing for you and test as well.
It can be found in android studio
Tools > App Links Assistant.
useful demo video can be seen at this link.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpaByLW_ctw
There is a perfect way to launch our android application through Deeplink.
<activity
android:name="com.example.android.GizmosActivity"
android:label="#string/title_gizmos" >
<intent-filter android:label="#string/filter_title_viewgizmos">
<action android:name="android.intent.action.VIEW" />
<category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT" />
<category android:name="android.intent.category.BROWSABLE" />
<data android:scheme="http"
android:host="www.example.com"
android:pathPrefix="/gizmos" />
</intent-filter>
</activity>
Here, I can easily launch my application through “http://www.example.com/gizmos”, But my question comes when I am going to hit shorten URL of this link i.e. goo.gl/tNQpWe.
What could be the ways to launch my app through tiny/ shorten url too ?
Please suggest.
The short url will be redirecting to your server/domain and from there you do the same what "gizmos" did. Deep linking is basically a HTML page rendering some expected data by your android application (In your case android:host and android:pathPrefix)
You will need to create a basic html rendering the android schema if you need data to be passed. I would suggest you to follow Branch.io.
https://blog.branch.io/technical-guide-to-deep-linking-on-android-chrome-intents
My android app allows to open other website like "http://www.google.com" in a web browser from app. And my code is below.
<activity
android:name=".HomeActivity"
android:launchMode="singleTop"
android:screenOrientation="portrait" >
<intent-filter>
<category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT" />
<action android:name="android.intent.action.VIEW" />
<data android:scheme="http" />
<data android:scheme="https" />
</intent-filter>
</activity>
But this gives me a problem. In the email or text message, click any website link, there will be a choice to open from my app. See the picture I posted. If I click on www.google.com in the text message, I will get a choice to open from my app.
I don't want the popup shows my app. How to handle this? Please help. Thanks a lot.
You can't avoid that, unless you specifically know what browser the user wants to use. And you don't know that.
You could have a WebView activity/fragment bundled in your application that will display webpages for you. That way you'd have full control. Here's a guide on WebView
Your app is being displayed in the Complete Action Using chooser because of your intent-filter:
<intent-filter>
<category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT" />
<action android:name="android.intent.action.VIEW" />
<data android:scheme="http" />
<data android:scheme="https" />
</intent-filter>
and particularly because you've specified just a "scheme" entry, with no specific "host". This would in effect offer any web URL intent to open in your app.
Without understanding what your intended behavior exactly is, you can delete the <data> nodes from your intent-filter to remove your app from the Chooser.
Or alternatively, you might want specific URL's to offer your app in the Chooser, like http://yourserver.com and https://yourserver.com, for this you could alter your intent-filter as follows:
<data android:scheme="http" android:host="yourserver.com" />
If your question is to block URLs of other websites in your android app for download purpose then search for the iConstants.java file in your project and write the following code:
public interface iConstants {
public static final String[] DISABLE_DOWNLOADING = {"URL", };
public static final String WEB_DISABLE = "We cannot allow to download videos form this website.";
}
I have to open my android application, when user clicks on a link that has my domain name. For example, lets say my domain is abc.com and i have posted this link on my Facebook page. When one of my friend(who has my application installed in his device) clicks on the link(in the device's browser), i should be able to open my website in a webview inside my application.
I am not sure how to get this work, but will intent-filters work? If so, can someone give me a piece of code to start with?
You have to define a custom Intent Filter in the activity that should be launched when the url is clicked.
Let say that you want to launch the FirstActivity when a user click a http://www.example.com/ link on a web page.
Add this to your activity in the Manifest :
<activity android:name=".FirstActivity"
android:label="FirstActivity">
<intent-filter>
<action android:name="android.intent.action.VIEW"></action>
<category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT"></category>
<category android:name="android.intent.category.BROWSABLE"></category>
<data android:host="www.example.com" android:scheme="http"></data>
</intent-filter>
</activity>
When the user will click a HTML link to http://www.example.com/, the system will prompt either to use the browser or your app.
You can achieve this by using URI schemes (link e.g. myscheme://open/chat), add into your manifest this filter into e.g. main activity section (set your scheme name):
<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="YOUR_SCHEME_NAME" />
</intent-filter>
In your activity where you've set filter, you can get URI by calling this (in onCreate):
Uri intentUri = getIntent().getData();
What I want: To be able to send my custom file by mail and import it with my application from the preview button in GMail or when opening it in a file browser.
What I know: I've read a lot of custom mime type handlers, that android doesn't care about file extension etc., but how to create the mime type for my custom file?
The question: Do I need to be a content provider? I just want to import files (from backup) not provide anything. I've seen people having handlers for "application/abc" saying it's working fine, but how to add that connection for my file "myFile.abc" and the mime type?
Some direction how to register/map custom mime types would be appreciated! :)
As far as I can tell, mime types are pretty flexible (I created mine as application/whatever) and they're accepted immediately by Android, as far back as Dalvik version 2.1. To handle them properly, I added this intent-filter:
<intent-filter>
<action android:name="android.intent.action.VIEW"/>
<category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT"/>
<data android:mimeType="application/whatever" />
</intent-filter>
There is a caveat though. Even though I always set the type of the send Intent with intent.setType("application/whatever");, on some phones I've seen the actual data on arrival as application/octet (to see the value, I assigned the incoming Intent and inspected its value directly Intent currentIntent = getIntent();). The receiving Android device didn't know what to do with the incoming data and told me so. So I added
<intent-filter>
<action android:name="android.intent.action.VIEW"/>
<category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT"/>
<data android:mimeType="application/octet-stream" />
</intent-filter>
This approach could be troublesome of course, but the problem with Gmail at least is that it doesn't necessarily write the file with the name as it comes in, which renders any Path I choose to define useless. And at least with an incoming octet-stream you know it's not any app's specific data you're stealing away... Still, you should validate the data afterwards and not just assume it's valid for your app.
I have added custom mime type in android contacts list. After a long research i decided to share this with you guys, i have tested this on all Android cell phone including android 9.0.
here is my Github link
Untested, but something like this should work. Put it in your AndroidManifest.xml with the activity you want to open the file:
<activity name=".ActivityHere">
<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="file" />
<data android:mimeType="mimeTypeHere" />
</intent-filter>
</activity>
<activity
android:name="MainActivity"
android:label="#string/app_name"
android:theme="#android:style/Theme.NoTitleBar.Fullscreen" >
<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="{your mime}.com"
android:scheme="http" >
</data>
</intent-filter>
</activity>
<!--
android:scheme="http" will make android "think" thats this is a link
-->
Now, when you receiving a sms with the text "http://{your mime}.com" or clicking link on the web with this text, your activity (MainActivity) will run.
You also can add parameters:
text = "http://{your mime}.com/?number=111";
Then in onCreate() or onResume() methods you'll add:
Intent intentURI = getIntent();
Uri uri = null;
String receivedNum = "";
Log.d("TAG", "intent= "+intentURI);
if (Intent.ACTION_VIEW.equals(intentURI.getAction())) {
if (intentURI!=null){
uri = intentURI.getData();
Log.d("TAG", "uri= "+uri);
}
if (uri!=null)
receivedNum = uri.getQueryParameter("number");
}
Register a custom mime type using android.webkit.MimeTypeMap