Question

I have an Android app that people use as a replacement for a website. Hence, when users encounter an URL to the website, I want to give them the option to “open the URL” in my app instead of in the browser. In other words I want the popup to appear that lets them choose between my app and the browser (and possibly other apps).

I understand from various sources that I need to add an intent filter to an activity in my app with the ‘data’ filter that filters on URLs of the correct form.

The website in question is http://members.iracing.com, hence I have added the following intent filter:

    <activity
        android:name=".MainActivity"
        android:label="@string/title_activity_main" >
        <intent-filter>
            <action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN" />
            <category android:name="android.intent.category.LAUNCHER" />
        </intent-filter>
        <intent-filter>
            <action android:name="android.intent.action.VIEW" />
            <category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT" />
            <data android:scheme="http" />
            <data android:host="members.iracing.com" />
        </intent-filter>
    </activity>

I have tried various forms of these data filters, like using a single ‘data’ node with both attributes:

        <intent-filter>
            <action android:name="android.intent.action.VIEW" />
            <category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT" />
            <data android:scheme="http" android:host="members.iracing.com"/>
        </intent-filter>

It is simply not working. I don’t know what else to tell you. I hosted a simple HTML page on my website with a couple links to various pages on that website (all starting with “http://members.iracing.com/…”) and when I click any of them, they simply open in the browser without ever asking me which app I want to use. I tried it both on the emulator as well as after installing the app on my physical device, nothing works. I tried this in a completely BLANK, new Android project just to see if that would work, nothing.

I then realized that the website requires authentication, and if you are not logged in it redirects to the login page at https://members.iracing.com/membersite/login.jsp, hence I tried replacing the scheme by “https”. I even tried changing the host to “www.members.iracing.com”, and in the end I even tried a combination of all these things (not sure if this should work, but hey, I’m desperate at this point…..)

       <intent-filter>
            <action android:name="android.intent.action.VIEW" />
            <category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT" />
            <data android:scheme="http" />
            <data android:scheme="https" />
            <data android:host="members.iracing.com" />
            <data android:host="www.members.iracing.com" />
        </intent-filter>

Still no go. I’m not sure if the redirect is relevant though, the browser clearly first goes to the non-redirected site, then does the redirect to the login page, but at no point do I get the choice to open it in my app. Furthermore, if I login manually in the browser first, there is no redirect, and it still does not work.

Am I missing something obvious here? I’m pulling my hair out why this isn’t working, and I cannot debug it besides trying every possible combination I could think of (I did…). Thanks for any help!

Answer 1

use these three in your <intent filter>

<action android:name="android.intent.action.VIEW" />
<category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT" />
<category android:name="android.intent.category.BROWSABLE" />