Question

I want to write an app that sits in the ‘Share via’ menu (for quickly emailing myself links to things I find on the web or look at in RSS readers) For this I’m declaring my app with an intent.action.SEND intent-filter:

    <activity
        android:name="uk.co.baroquedub.checkit.MainActivity"
        android:label="@string/app_name" >
        <intent-filter>
            <action android:name="android.intent.action.SEND" />
            <category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT" />
            <data android:mimeType="text/plain" />
           </intent-filter>
    </activity>

Here’s a skeleton of the MainActivity package

package uk.co.baroquedub.testcheck;

import android.app.Activity;
import android.os.AsyncTask;
import android.os.Bundle;

import android.widget.Toast;

public class MainActivity extends Activity {

@Override
protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);

// real code here grabs URL from intent then emails it as an asyncTask:
    doSendTask task = new doSendTask();
    task.execute(new String[] { "urlString" });
}

protected void showDialog (String response){
    Toast.makeText(this, response, Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();
    finish();
}

private class doSendTask extends AsyncTask<String, Void, String> {
    @Override
    protected String doInBackground(String... urls) {
      String response = "";
      // Real code here sends the email
      // Simulate waiting for the email to be sent:
      try { 
          Thread.sleep(5000);
          response = "Waited";
      }
      catch (InterruptedException ex) {  }

      return response;
    }

    @Override
        protected void onPostExecute(String result) {
            showDialog(result);
    }
}

}

The problem is that my app is opening on top of the browser (a white screen appears with a title bar showing the name of the app) – which is stopping the browser from being accessible until the ‘wait’ is finished (hence defeating the purpose of wrapping my sendEmail functionality within an asyncTask).

See: screencast for demo of problem

See: related question with full code

Can anyone tell me how I can have my app start (from the ‘Share via’ menu) and execute my code but without actually having a ‘View’ (if that’s the right terminology for the blank screen and title bar)?

Answer 1

1. start an activity without any UI
2. start a service to do your background service in OnCreate
3. finish the activity as soon as you start service
4. let the service post notification or Toast about completion.

If you do want to show a dialog, you could start a separate activity with just the dialog from service, but it is usually intrusive to show dialog.