Allow JS to send Intent to other android app

[Arthur-Milchior]

What if... there was a javascript API to create and send an Intent? That is, allow javascript to do Android inter-app RPCs...

...and there was a metronome app that responded to Intents to "start metronome at NNN bpm" and "stop metronome"

There are a number of metronome apps on github and responding to an Intent to start/stop seems pretty easy?
Adding a javascript API to send an Intent seems pretty easy?

Now we've got two excellent features where they belong (IMHO) and we do not have a metronome feature mushrooming within AnkiDroid

?

Originally posted by @mikehardy in #17412

@mikehardy What is the second excellent feature?

[mikehardy]

The intent handling on the other side, in the metronome app of course! The link I posted makes me think that's maybe already handled in one app at least...

[david-allison]

I believe this already exists:

Anki-Android/AnkiDroid/src/main/java/com/ichi2/anki/AbstractFlashcardViewer.kt

Lines 2443 to 2483 in 28885f7

	var intent: Intent? = null
	try {
	if (url.startsWith("intent:")) {
	intent = Intent.parseUri(url, Intent.URI_INTENT_SCHEME)
	} else if (url.startsWith("android-app:")) {
	intent = Intent.parseUri(url, Intent.URI_ANDROID_APP_SCHEME)
	}
	if (intent != null) {
	if (packageManager.resolveActivityCompat(
	intent,
	ResolveInfoFlagsCompat.EMPTY
	) == null
	) {
	val packageName = intent.getPackage()
	if (packageName == null) {
	Timber.d(
	"Not using resolved intent uri because not available: %s",
	intent
	)
	intent = null
	} else {
	Timber.d(
	"Resolving intent uri to market uri because not available: %s",
	intent
	)
	intent = Intent(
	Intent.ACTION_VIEW,
	Uri.parse("market://details?id=$packageName")
	)
	if (packageManager.resolveActivityCompat(
	intent,
	ResolveInfoFlagsCompat.EMPTY
	) == null
	) {
	intent = null
	}
	}
	} else {
	// https://developer.chrome.com/multidevice/android/intents says that we should remove this
	intent.addCategory(Intent.CATEGORY_BROWSABLE)
	}

[mikehardy]

🤔 looks like a start but doesn't seem to allow extras (to send tempo) and does a start activity, I wonder if that would foreground the app etc which would be a review irritation. Not sure how to send an intent in the background though. Anyway, this is definitely going in the direction I was thinking, vs a metronome in ankidroid

[Arthur-Milchior]

Oh. When you mentioned "two features" I thought you meant that there was the metronome, and another feature we may want to start through API that I didn't know of