Open MvvmCross app via link with data

Question

In native Android apps you can define an intent-filter for an activity in the Manifest file which can open the app when a specific link (e.g. myprotocol://mysite.com/action/data) is visited from a website or email.

<intent-filter>
    <data android:scheme="myprotocol" android:host="mysite.com"/>
    <action android:name="android.intent.action.VIEW"/>
    <category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT" />
    <category android:name="android.intent.category.BROWSABLE" />
</intent-filter>

When I try to add this to the AndroidManifest file in an MvvmCross application, it seems that only the view gets loaded, without ViewModel linked to it. I cannot seem to find any information on how to load the ViewModel and get my intent data (the data part of the url).

Has anyone done this before?

Answer 1

I have an app that responds to scanning NFC tags and I have a similar situation.

My solution is to add the following in my OnCreate override right after I call base.OnCreate(bundle):

if (null == ViewModel)
{
    //This should only happen when the Intent is not an Mvx one. I.e. when having scanned
    //NFC tag. We need to load the ViewModel manually.
    var loaderService = Mvx.Resolve<IMvxViewModelLoader>();
    ViewModel = (ScanViewModel) loaderService.LoadViewModel(
        new MvxViewModelRequest(typeof (ScanViewModel), null, null, null), null);
}

As the comment says, the Intent is not one coming from MvvmCross. This means the bundle which tells MvvmCross which ViewModel to load is not present. So what I do is to create the ViewModel myself.