In Android, How can I display an application selector based on file type?

Question

Apologies if this has already been answered - if someone can point me to an already-answered question, that would be great...

Very simply, I would like to be able to

Answer 1

To get the applications that can successfully open a given intent you'll use the PackageManager. Simply construct the intent as above and then use this code to get the applications that can handle the intent.

Intent myIntent = new Intent();
myIntent.setAction(Intent.ACTION_VIEW);
myIntent.addCategory("android.intent.category.LAUNCHER");
myIntent.setType("mp3");    

PackageManager manager = getPackageManager();
List<ResolveInfo> info = manager.queryIntentActivities(
    myIntent, PackageManager.MATCH_DEFAULT_ONLY);

This will give you all the information on the programs that can handle the intent, including icon, and packagename. You can then create a dialog box with these options and save the option the user chooses.

Answer 2

I assume you want to see this chooser dialog if you do open a file (or URL) and there is more than one application registered to handle it? E.g. you open a youtube URL and can chose to use the youtube player or browser?

That is the kind of intent the system sends when I want to open an image (through the file browser):

File f = new File("/sdcard/IMG_0114.JPG");
Uri uri = Uri.fromFile(f);

Intent i = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW);
// use setDataAndType() - setData() and setType() cancel each other
i.setDataAndType(uri, "image/jpeg");
i.putExtra("preview", false);
i.putExtra("key_filename", "/sdcard/IMG_0114.JPG");
i.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_STREAM, uri);
i.putExtra("sort_order", 0);

// It's one of the flag combinations:
i.setFlags(Intent.FLAG_DEBUG_LOG_RESOLUTION);

i.setFlags(Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK |
        Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_SINGLE_TOP |
        Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_MULTIPLE_TASK |
        Intent.FLAG_DEBUG_LOG_RESOLUTION);

startActivity(i);

EDIT: corrected code to get a working (minimal) solution.

I am not sure which fields of the extra data has to be set - didn't find documentation for that.