Is there a way to pass a message from an Android browser to an app?

Question

I have a situation where I\'d like for some data to be passed from a mobile web site to a native Android app. A complication is that, in the normal case, the native Android app

Answer 1

The solution is actually quite simple, I'm a bit astonished that nobody has been able to come up with it for over a year. So here it is:

The basic idea is to use cookies to store the information. The data flow is as follows:

open web page -> set cookie -> redirect to market -> install app -> launch browser with web page -> read cookie -> start custom intent with cookie data -> capture intent and read cookie data

The user visits a webpage (by scanning a QR Tag for example). The url of the webpage holds a reference to the data you want to pass, or holds the data itself. The website sets the data as a cookie and redirects to the Android market (http://market.android.com/details?id=com.yourapp). As soon as your app launches, you open a browser and load the same webpage again. This time however, it detects that the cookie is already set and redirects to a custom URL scheme like example://example.com/installed?id=DATA, instead of the market. Using an intent filter, you launch your activity and extract the information from the intent.

Here is the relevant Activity code:

public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
    Intent intent = getIntent();
    if(intent == null || intent.getData() == null || !"example".equals(intent.getData().getScheme())) {
        String url = "http://example.com/yourApp/index.php";
        Intent i = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW);
        i.setData(Uri.parse(url));
        startActivity(i);
        finish();
        return;
    }else {
        Uri uri = intent.getData();
        if("example".equals(uri.getScheme())) {
            id = uri.getQueryParameter("id");
        }
    }
    ... initialise your activity ...
}

A simple PHP file (the website) for easy demonstration:

And the intent filter:

BTW, I have decided to blog about the issue.