How to filter specific apps for ACTION_SEND intent (and set a different text for each app)

How can you filter out specific apps when using the ACTION_SEND intent? This question has been asked in various ways, but I haven't been able to gather a solution based on the answers given. Hopefully someone can help. I would like to provide the ability to share within an app. Following Android Dev Alexander Lucas' advice, I'd prefer to do it using intents and not using the Facebook/Twitter APIs.

Sharing using the ACTION_SEND intent is great, but the problem is (1) I don't want every sharing option there, I'd rather limit it to FB, Twitter, and Email, and (2) I don't want to share the same thing to each sharing app. For example, in my twitter share I'm going to include some mentions and hashtags limited it to 140 chars or less, while the facebook share is going to include a link and a feature image.

Is it possible to limit the options for ACTION_SEND (share) intent? I've seen something about using PackageManager and queryIntentActivities, but haven't been able to figure out the connection between the PackageManager and the ACTION_SEND intent.

OR

Rather than filter the sharing apps, my problem could also be solved if I could use the ACTION_SEND intent to go directly to facebook or twitter rather than popping up the dialog. If that were the case then I could create my own dialog and when they click "Facebook" create a Facebook-specific intent and just send them all the way to Facebook. Same with Twitter.

OR is it not possible? Are the Facebook and Twitter APIs the only way?

Solution 1:

To my knowledge, StackOverflow has lots of people asking this question in various ways, but nobody has answered it completely yet.

My spec called for the user to be able to choose email, twitter, facebook, or SMS, with custom text for each one. Here is how I accomplished that:

public void onShareClick(View v) {
    Resources resources = getResources();

    Intent emailIntent = new Intent();
    emailIntent.setAction(Intent.ACTION_SEND);
    // Native email client doesn't currently support HTML, but it doesn't hurt to try in case they fix it
    emailIntent.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_TEXT, Html.fromHtml(resources.getString(R.string.share_email_native)));
    emailIntent.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_SUBJECT, resources.getString(R.string.share_email_subject));
    emailIntent.setType("message/rfc822");

    PackageManager pm = getPackageManager();
    Intent sendIntent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_SEND);     
    sendIntent.setType("text/plain");


    Intent openInChooser = Intent.createChooser(emailIntent, resources.getString(R.string.share_chooser_text));

    List<ResolveInfo> resInfo = pm.queryIntentActivities(sendIntent, 0);
    List<LabeledIntent> intentList = new ArrayList<LabeledIntent>();        
    for (int i = 0; i < resInfo.size(); i++) {
        // Extract the label, append it, and repackage it in a LabeledIntent
        ResolveInfo ri = resInfo.get(i);
        String packageName = ri.activityInfo.packageName;
        if(packageName.contains("android.email")) {
            emailIntent.setPackage(packageName);
        } else if(packageName.contains("twitter") || packageName.contains("facebook") || packageName.contains("mms") || packageName.contains("android.gm")) {
            Intent intent = new Intent();
            intent.setComponent(new ComponentName(packageName, ri.activityInfo.name));
            intent.setAction(Intent.ACTION_SEND);
            intent.setType("text/plain");
            if(packageName.contains("twitter")) {
                intent.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_TEXT, resources.getString(R.string.share_twitter));
            } else if(packageName.contains("facebook")) {
                // Warning: Facebook IGNORES our text. They say "These fields are intended for users to express themselves. Pre-filling these fields erodes the authenticity of the user voice."
                // One workaround is to use the Facebook SDK to post, but that doesn't allow the user to choose how they want to share. We can also make a custom landing page, and the link
                // will show the <meta content ="..."> text from that page with our link in Facebook.
                intent.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_TEXT, resources.getString(R.string.share_facebook));
            } else if(packageName.contains("mms")) {
                intent.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_TEXT, resources.getString(R.string.share_sms));
            } else if(packageName.contains("android.gm")) { // If Gmail shows up twice, try removing this else-if clause and the reference to "android.gm" above
                intent.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_TEXT, Html.fromHtml(resources.getString(R.string.share_email_gmail)));
                intent.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_SUBJECT, resources.getString(R.string.share_email_subject));               
                intent.setType("message/rfc822");
            }

            intentList.add(new LabeledIntent(intent, packageName, ri.loadLabel(pm), ri.icon));
        }
    }

    // convert intentList to array
    LabeledIntent[] extraIntents = intentList.toArray( new LabeledIntent[ intentList.size() ]);

    openInChooser.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_INITIAL_INTENTS, extraIntents);
    startActivity(openInChooser);       
}

I found bits of how to do this in various places, but I haven't seen all of it in one place anywhere else.

Note that this method also hides all the silly options that I don't want, like sharing over wifi and bluetooth.

Hope this helps someone.

Edit: In a comment, I was asked to explain what this code is doing. Basically, it's creating an ACTION_SEND intent for the native email client ONLY, then tacking other intents onto the chooser. Making the original intent email-specific gets rid of all the extra junk like wifi and bluetooth, then I grab the other intents I want from a generic ACTION_SEND of type plain-text, and tack them on before showing the chooser.

When I grab the additional intents, I set custom text for each one.

Edit2: It's been awhile since I posted this, and things have changed a bit. If you are seeing gmail twice in the list of options, try removing the special handling for "android.gm" as suggested in a comment by @h_k below.

Since this one answer is the source of nearly all my stackoverflow reputation points, I have to at least try to keep it up to date.

Solution 2:

If you want a customized option then you should not rely on the default dialog provided by android for this action.

What you need to do instead is roll out your own. You will need to query the PackageManager on which packages handle the action you require and then based on the reply, you apply filtering and customized text.

Specifically, take a look at the method queryIntentActivities of the PackageManager class. You build the intent that would launch the default dialog (the ACTION_SEND intent), pass that to this method and you will receive a list of objects that contain info on the activities that can handle that intent. Using that, you can choose the ones you want.

Once you build your list of packages you want to present, you need to build your own list dialog (preferably an activity with the dialog theme) which will display that list.

One thing to note though is that it's very hard to make that custom dialog look like the default one. The problem is that the theme used in that dialog is an internal theme and cannot be used by your application. You can either try to make it as similar to the native one as you want or go for a completely custom look (many apps do that like the gallery app etc)

Solution 3:

Found a solution that works for me looking here (see the third comment on the first answer). This code looks for a valid twitter client and uses it to post the tweet. Note: It does not give you an Intent with the various Twitter clients and allow you to choose.

Share using twitter:

Intent shareIntent = findTwitterClient(); 
shareIntent.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_TEXT, "test");
startActivity(Intent.createChooser(shareIntent, "Share"));

Calling this method:

public Intent findTwitterClient() {
    final String[] twitterApps = {
            // package // name - nb installs (thousands)
            "com.twitter.android", // official - 10 000
            "com.twidroid", // twidroid - 5 000
            "com.handmark.tweetcaster", // Tweecaster - 5 000
            "com.thedeck.android" }; // TweetDeck - 5 000 };
    Intent tweetIntent = new Intent();
    tweetIntent.setType("text/plain");
    final PackageManager packageManager = getPackageManager();
    List<ResolveInfo> list = packageManager.queryIntentActivities(
            tweetIntent, PackageManager.MATCH_DEFAULT_ONLY);

    for (int i = 0; i < twitterApps.length; i++) {
        for (ResolveInfo resolveInfo : list) {
            String p = resolveInfo.activityInfo.packageName;
            if (p != null && p.startsWith(twitterApps[i])) {
                tweetIntent.setPackage(p);
                return tweetIntent;
            }
        }
    }

    return null;
}

Facebook will be similar using "com.facebook.katana", although you still can't set the message text (deprecated July 2011).

Code source: Intent to open twitter client on Android