How to add custom mime type?

Question

What I want: To be able to send my custom file by mail and import it with my application from the preview button in GMail or when opening it in a file brows

Answer 1

I have added custom mime type in android contacts list. After a long research i decided to share this with you guys, i have tested this on all Android cell phone including android 9.0.

here is my Github link

Answer 2

As far as I can tell, mime types are pretty flexible (I created mine as application/whatever) and they're accepted immediately by Android, as far back as Dalvik version 2.1. To handle them properly, I added this intent-filter:

<intent-filter>
  <action android:name="android.intent.action.VIEW"/>
  <category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT"/>
  <data android:mimeType="application/whatever" />
</intent-filter>

There is a caveat though. Even though I always set the type of the send Intent with intent.setType("application/whatever");, on some phones I've seen the actual data on arrival as application/octet (to see the value, I assigned the incoming Intent and inspected its value directly Intent currentIntent = getIntent();). The receiving Android device didn't know what to do with the incoming data and told me so. So I added

<intent-filter>
  <action android:name="android.intent.action.VIEW"/>
  <category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT"/>
  <data android:mimeType="application/octet-stream" />
</intent-filter>

This approach could be troublesome of course, but the problem with Gmail at least is that it doesn't necessarily write the file with the name as it comes in, which renders any Path I choose to define useless. And at least with an incoming octet-stream you know it's not any app's specific data you're stealing away... Still, you should validate the data afterwards and not just assume it's valid for your app.

Answer 3

<activity
    android:name="MainActivity"
    android:label="@string/app_name"
    android:theme="@android:style/Theme.NoTitleBar.Fullscreen" >
    <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:host="{your mime}.com"
               android:scheme="http" >            
        </data>
    </intent-filter>
</activity>

<!--
android:scheme="http" will make android "think" thats this is a link
-->

Now, when you receiving a sms with the text "http://{your mime}.com" or clicking link on the web with this text, your activity (MainActivity) will run.

You also can add parameters:

text = "http://{your mime}.com/?number=111";

Then in onCreate() or onResume() methods you'll add:

Intent intentURI = getIntent();
Uri uri = null;   
String receivedNum = "";  
Log.d("TAG", "intent= "+intentURI);   
if (Intent.ACTION_VIEW.equals(intentURI.getAction())) {  
    if (intentURI!=null){     
        uri = intentURI.getData();   
        Log.d("TAG", "uri= "+uri);   
    }   
    if (uri!=null)   
        receivedNum = uri.getQueryParameter("number");    
}

Answer 4

Untested, but something like this should work. Put it in your AndroidManifest.xml with the activity you want to open the file:

<activity name=".ActivityHere">
    <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="file" />
        <data android:mimeType="mimeTypeHere" />
    </intent-filter>
</activity>

Answer 5

Register a custom mime type using android.webkit.MimeTypeMap