Opening/starting a specific Android activity passi

Question

I am developing an Android application and a website. What I am trying to do now is that I like to open the specific activity of Android application from the browser when the user click on a link.

This is my Android activity class

class SphereViewerActivity : AppCompatActivity(){
   override fun onCreate(savedInstanceState: Bundle?) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState)
        setContentView(R.layout.activity_sphere_viewer)
        intent.getStringExtra("image_url")

    }
}

As you can see in my code, I am getting the image_url parameter from the browser. Is it possible to open that activity passing the parameter from the JavaScript or browser?

I found the solution, it is to have the link like this

<a href="intent://scan/#Intent;scheme=zxing;package=com.google.zxing.client.android;S.browser_fallback_url=http%3A%2F%2Fzxing.org;end"> Take a QR code </a>

But how can I pass intent data as parameter?

I tried adding the app links. not working when I click Test App Links

Answer 1

You have 4 options to achieve what you want:

1. Deep Links
2. Android App Links
3. Firebase Dynamic Links
4. Firebase App Indexing

Refer to this post to see more descriptions about them.

In simplest approach (Deep Links), you can introduce your Activity as a handler of specific pattern URLs and pass the desired parameters as URL query params.

AndroidManifest.xml

<activity android:name=".SphereViewerActivity">

    <intent-filter>
        <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 "myapp://zxing" -->
        <data android:host="zxing" />
        <data android:scheme="myapp" />
    </intent-filter>

</activity>

SphereViewerActivity.kt

class SphereViewerActivity : AppCompatActivity(){
    override fun onCreate(savedInstanceState: Bundle?) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState)
        setContentView(R.layout.activity_sphere_viewer)

        if (intent != null && intent.action == Intent.ACTION_VIEW) {
            intent.data?.apply{
                if (getQueryParameter("image_url") != null && getQueryParameter("image_url").isNotEmpty()) {
                    val imageUrl = data.getQueryParameter ("image_url") as String
                    // do what you want to do with imageUrl
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

Your html snippet:

<a href="myapp://zxing?image_url=some_image_url"> Take a QR code </a>