Share something to a phonegap app

Question

Is there any way to register a phonegap app to appear in the menu of applications to share?

Answer 1

To appear in this list you have to modify the AndroidManifest.xml file and add the following lines under your activity :

<intent-filter> 
    <action android:name="android.intent.action.SEND" />
    <category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT" />
    <data android:mimeType="text/plain" />
</intent-filter>

This will make your app appear in the list. Now I think you may probably also want to know how to handle this in your code. When another application is going to share some text with you, it's going to start your application with an Android "Intent". To be able to use Intents, you need a PhoneGap plugin. I think WebIntent might suit you. This would be the code :

// deviceready is PhoneGap's init event
document.addEventListener('deviceready', function () {
  window.plugins.webintent.getExtra(WebIntent.EXTRA\_TEXT, function (url) {
    // url is the value of EXTRA_TEXT 
  }, function() {
    // There was no extra supplied.
  });
});

More info on WebIntent here : http://smus.com/android-phonegap-plugins/

Note : I don't think you'll be able to do this with PhoneGap Build though ... you can only use supported plugins, and can't change the AndroidManifest.xml file that much. You'll probably have to go the Cordova route and build everything on your machine.

---

Edit : there are a few people asking how to do this on iOS. There are two steps to do this :

1. Associate your app with the right file type associations by adding the relevant information in your info.plist. This SO answer explains how to do it : How do I associate file types with an iPhone application?. This will make your app appear in the list but your app won't receive the data yet.
2. Your application will now be launched with new parameters. You now have to be able to read these parameters. Check this question/answer on SO, it does exactly that : How to pass arguments to app built on Phonegap

Answer 2

I managed to get the URL of file to be shared; by using EXTRA_STREAM insted of EXTRA_TEXT inside deviceready, modifying Webintent.java, and adding an intent filter in AndroidMenifest.xml.

This is how my main activity looks:

    <activity android:configChanges="orientation|keyboardHidden|keyboard|screenSize|locale" android:label="@string/activity_name" android:launchMode="singleTop" android:name="MainActivity" android:theme="@android:style/Theme.Black.NoTitleBar" android:windowSoftInputMode="adjustResize">
        <intent-filter android:label="@string/launcher_name">
            <action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN" />
            <category android:name="android.intent.category.LAUNCHER" />
        </intent-filter>
        <intent-filter android:label="@string/app_name">
            <data android:mimeType="*/*" />
            <action android:name="android.intent.action.SEND" />                
            <category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT" />
        </intent-filter>
    </activity>

I found that the plugin had a bug for EXTRA_STREAM part, so i modified my javafile according to this:

https://github.com/Initsogar/cordova-webintent/issues/23

Also inside my js file, I have to call the function like this:(use of EXTRA_STREAM instead of EXTRA_TEXT )

    window.plugins.webintent.getExtra(window.plugins.webintent.EXTRA_STREAM, function (url) {
        // url is the value of EXTRA_STREAM 
        alert(url);
      }, function() {
        // There was no extra supplied.
        alert("no url");
      });

and I get the URI of the file.

Answer 3

@ericpeters0n - When using iPhone apps and Sharing, where does this list of apps come from then? For example, when I'm in the Photo Gallery and I share, the list includes Message, Mail, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr. How did these apps register themselves to appear on this list?