Start Android with Email

Question

I need a good way to send information to an Android device that does not use a special server with XML data. I would like to base this on email features. Let's say that I am sending an email with a special text / link, which when clicked starts with the intent on the phone.

I do not want to replace the current user email application. An interchangeable link would be the best "intent: // data1: data2" or something in that direction.

Speculation / decisions on how to act.

Answer 1

Yes you can do it. You register activity in your application as a handler for your own protocol (scheme). The application manifest will be something like:

<activity android:name=".SchemeActivity" android:label="@string/app_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="myownprotocol" /> </intent-filter> </activity> 

This action will not be displayed or get an icon in the application launcher, so you are likely to have “normal” activity in addition to this.

Now any web page can have a link, as shown below:

 <a href="myownprotocol://12345">Sample link</a> 

With the application installed, you can click such a link in a web browser and display SchemeActivity in my example. Inside this action, you can get the whole link (and parse the extra identifier / data or whatever you have):

 String fullUrl = getIntent().getDataString();