To open a URL from anywhere on the device, in your app

Aastha

15 December 2016

Many times we have seen that there are some URL(s) in our phone like in a email or whatsapp etc. and when clicked on them they take us to a particular application in our phone rather than to browser like there is a URL of facebook in your chat then on click on it the link is opened in Facebook app ( if you have Facebook application in your device), so i can we implement it for our own application.

So here I am having an app that should be opened when a particular URL is clicked. I made a simple one which will show the URI in a textview but you can use the url as you want. You can extract the values from it and perform some action.

Firstly you have to mention Intent Action_View of Browsable catregory in the android manifest with the particular activity you want to open on particular URL hit, it can be done as

<activity android:name=".GetURL">
   <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="http"
             android:host="mobikul.com"
             android:pathPrefix="/" />
       <data android:scheme="http"
             android:host="www.webkul.com"
             android:pathPrefix="/" />
   </intent-filter>
</activity>

<intent-filter>

<data android:scheme="http"

android:host="mobikul.com"

android:pathPrefix="/" />

<data android:scheme="http"

android:host="www.webkul.com"

android:pathPrefix="/" />

</intent-filter>

</activity>

Now your activity will be launched whenever a URL with the path as mentioned in <data> tag will be clicked. But remember the android system will still ask User whether he/she wants to open the URL with your app or with Browser.

Now lets get the URI in our Activity

public class GetURL extends Activity {

    @Override
    protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        setContentView(R.layout.geturl);
        TextView url_text = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.url);
        Intent in = getIntent();
        String action = in.getAction();

        if (Intent.ACTION_VIEW.equals(action)) {
            url_text.setText(in.getData().toString());
        }
    }
}

public class GetURL extends Activity {

@Override

protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {

super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);

setContentView(R.layout.geturl);

TextView url_text = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.url);

Intent in = getIntent();

String action = in.getAction();

if (Intent.ACTION_VIEW.equals(action)) {

url_text.setText(in.getData().toString());

}

And thats all. Try it yourself. Happy Coding!!