How can I open a URL in Android's web browser

Question

How to open an URL from code in the built-in web browser rather than within my application?

I tried this:

try {
    Intent myIntent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW, Uri.parse(download_link));
    startActivity(myIntent);
} catch (ActivityNotFoundException e) {
    Toast.makeText(this, "No application can handle this request."
        + " Please install a webbrowser",  Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show();
    e.printStackTrace();
}

but I got an Exception:

No activity found to handle Intent{action=android.intent.action.VIEW data =www.google.com

Answer 1

In 2.3, I had better luck with

final Intent intent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW).setData(Uri.parse(url));
activity.startActivity(intent);

The difference being the use of Intent.ACTION_VIEW rather than the String "android.intent.action.VIEW"

Answer 2

Simple Answer

You can see the official sample from Android Developer.

/**
 * Open a web page of a specified URL
 *
 * @param url URL to open
 */
public void openWebPage(String url) {
    Uri webpage = Uri.parse(url);
    Intent intent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW, webpage);
    if (intent.resolveActivity(getPackageManager()) != null) {
        startActivity(intent);
    }
}

How it works

Please have a look at the constructor of Intent:

public Intent (String action, Uri uri)

You can pass android.net.Uri instance to the 2nd parameter, and a new Intent is created based on the given data url.

And then, simply call startActivity(Intent intent) to start a new Activity, which is bundled with the Intent with the given URL.

Do I need the if check statement?

Yes. The docs says:

If there are no apps on the device that can receive the implicit intent, your app will crash when it calls startActivity(). To first verify that an app exists to receive the intent, call resolveActivity() on your Intent object. If the result is non-null, there is at least one app that can handle the intent and it's safe to call startActivity(). If the result is null, you should not use the intent and, if possible, you should disable the feature that invokes the intent.

Bonus

You can write in one line when creating the Intent instance like below:

Intent intent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW, Uri.parse(url));

Answer 3

Try this one OmegaIntentBuilder

OmegaIntentBuilder.from(context)
                .web("Your url here")
                .createIntentHandler()
                .failToast("You don't have app for open urls")
                .startActivity();

Answer 4

Within in your try block,paste the following code,Android Intent uses directly the link within the URI(Uniform Resource Identifier) braces in order to identify the location of your link.

You can try this:

Intent myIntent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW, Uri.parse("http://www.google.com"));
startActivity(myIntent);

Answer 5

Based on the answer by Mark B and the comments bellow:

protected void launchUrl(String url) {
    Uri uri = Uri.parse(url);

    if (uri.getScheme() == null || uri.getScheme().isEmpty()) {
        uri = Uri.parse("http://" + url);
    }

    Intent browserIntent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW, uri);

    if (browserIntent.resolveActivity(getPackageManager()) != null) {
        startActivity(browserIntent);
    }
}

Answer 6

This way uses a method, to allow you to input any String instead of having a fixed input. This does save some lines of code if used a repeated amount of times, as you only need three lines to call the method.

public Intent getWebIntent(String url) {
    //Make sure it is a valid URL before parsing the URL.
    if(!url.contains("http://") && !url.contains("https://")){
        //If it isn't, just add the HTTP protocol at the start of the URL.
        url = "http://" + url;
    }
    //create the intent
    Intent intent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW, Uri.parse(url)/*And parse the valid URL. It doesn't need to be changed at this point, it we don't create an instance for it*/);
    if (intent.resolveActivity(getPackageManager()) != null) {
        //Make sure there is an app to handle this intent
        return intent;
    }
    //If there is no app, return null.
    return null;
}

Using this method makes it universally usable. IT doesn't have to be placed in a specific activity, as you can use it like this:

Intent i = getWebIntent("google.com");
if(i != null)
    startActivity();

Or if you want to start it outside an activity, you simply call startActivity on the activity instance:

Intent i = getWebIntent("google.com");
if(i != null)
    activityInstance.startActivity(i);

As seen in both of these code blocks there is a null-check. This is as it returns null if there is no app to handle the intent.

This method defaults to HTTP if there is no protocol defined, as there are websites who don't have an SSL certificate(what you need for an HTTPS connection) and those will stop working if you attempt to use HTTPS and it isn't there. Any website can still force over to HTTPS, so those sides lands you at HTTPS either way

---

Because this method uses outside resources to display the page, there is no need for you to declare the INternet permission. The app that displays the webpage has to do that