Make a link in the Android browser start up my app

Question

Is it possible to make a link such as:

<a href="anton://useful_info_for_anton_app">click me!</a>

cause my Anton app to start up?

I know that this works for the Android Market app with the market protocol, but can something similar be done with other apps?

Here is an example of a link that will start up the Android Market:

<a href="market://search?q=pname:com.nytimes.android">click me!</a>

Update: The answer I accepted provided by eldarerathis works great, but I just want to mention that I had some trouble with the order of the subelements of the <intent-filter> tag. I suggest you simply make another <intent-filter> with the new subelements in that tag to avoid the problems I had. For instance my AndroidManifest.xml looks like this:

<activity android:name=".AntonWorld"
          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>
        <data android:scheme="anton" />
        <action android:name="android.intent.action.VIEW" />
        <category android:name="android.intent.category.BROWSABLE" />
        <category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT" />
    </intent-filter>
</activity>

Answer 1

Try my simple trick:

        public boolean shouldOverrideUrlLoading(WebView view, String url) {
            if(url.startsWith("classRegister:")) {                  
                Intent MnRegister = new Intent(getApplicationContext(), register.class); startActivity(MnRegister);
            }               
            view.loadUrl(url);
            return true;
        }

and my html link:

<a href="classRegister:true">Go to register.java</a>

or you can make < a href="classRegister:true" > <- "true" value for class filename

however this script work for mailto link :)

        if (url.startsWith("mailto:")) {
            String[] blah_email = url.split(":");
            Intent emailIntent = new Intent(android.content.Intent.ACTION_SEND);
            emailIntent.setType("text/plain");
            emailIntent.putExtra(android.content.Intent.EXTRA_EMAIL, new String[]{blah_email[1]});
            emailIntent.putExtra(android.content.Intent.EXTRA_SUBJECT, what_ever_you_want_the_subject_to_be)");
            Log.v("NOTICE", "Sending Email to: " + blah_email[1] + " with subject: " + what_ever_you_want_the_subject_to_be);
            startActivity(emailIntent);
        }

Answer 2

Once you have the intent and custom url scheme for your app set up, this javascript code at the top of a receiving page has worked for me on both iOS and Android:

<script type="text/javascript">
// if iPod / iPhone, display install app prompt
if (navigator.userAgent.match(/(iPhone|iPod|iPad);?/i) ||
    navigator.userAgent.match(/android/i)) {
  var store_loc = "itms://itunes.com/apps/raditaz";
  var href = "/iphone/";
  var is_android = false;
  if (navigator.userAgent.match(/android/i)) {
    store_loc = "https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.raditaz";
    href = "/android/";
    is_android = true;
  }
  if (location.hash) {
    var app_loc = "raditaz://" + location.hash.substring(2);
    if (is_android) {
      var w = null;
      try {
        w = window.open(app_loc, '_blank');
      } catch (e) {
        // no exception
      }
      if (w) { window.close(); }
      else { window.location = store_loc; }
    } else {
      var loadDateTime = new Date();
      window.setTimeout(function() {
        var timeOutDateTime = new Date();
        if (timeOutDateTime - loadDateTime < 5000) {
          window.location = store_loc;
        } else { window.close(); }
      },
      25);
      window.location = app_loc;
    }
  } else {
    location.href = href;
  }
}
</script>

This has only been tested on the Android browser. I am not sure about Firefox or Opera. The key is even though the Android browser will not throw a nice exception for you on window.open(custom_url, '_blank'), it will fail and return null which you can test later.

Update: using store_loc = "https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.raditaz"; to link to Google Play on Android.