Share Intent Example

Sending Simple Data to Other Apps

Sending and receiving data between applications with intents is most commonly used for social sharing of content. Intents allow users to share information quickly and easily, using their favorite applications.

NOTE: The best way to add a share action item to an ActionBar is to use ShareActionProvider, which became available in API level 14. ShareActionProvider is discussed in the lesson about Adding an Easy Share Action.

Send Text Content

The most straightforward and common use of the ACTION_SEND action is sending text content from one activity to another. For example, the built-in Browser app can share the URL of the currently-displayed page as text with any application. This is useful for sharing an article or website with friends via email or social networking. Here is the code to implement this type of sharing:

Intent sendIntent = new Intent();
sendIntent.setAction(Intent.ACTION_SEND);
sendIntent.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_TEXT, "This is my text to send.");
sendIntent.setType("text/plain");
startActivity(sendIntent);

If there's an installed application with a filter that matches ACTION_SEND and MIME type text/plain, the Android system will run it; if more than one application matches, the system displays a disambiguation dialog (a "chooser") that allows the user to choose an app. 

 However, if you call Intent.createChooser(), passing it your Intent object, it returns a version of your intent that will always display the chooser. This has some advantages:

• Even if the user has previously selected a default action for this intent, the chooser will still be displayed.
• If no applications match, Android displays a system message.
• You can specify a title for the chooser dialog.

Example Application:

Screen Shots:

main.xml:

<RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="match_parent"
    tools:context="${relativePackage}.${activityClass}" >

    <Button
        android:id="@+id/button1"
        android:layout_width="wrap_content"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:layout_alignParentTop="true"
        android:layout_centerHorizontal="true"
        android:layout_marginTop="56dp"
        android:onClick="share"
        android:text="Share" />

</RelativeLayout>

MainActivity.java:

package com.ram.shareintent;

import android.app.Activity;
import android.content.Intent;
import android.os.Bundle;
import android.view.View;

public class MainActivity extends Activity
{

    @Override
    protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState)
    {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        setContentView(R.layout.main);
    }

    public void share(View view)
    {
        Intent sendIntent = new Intent();
        sendIntent.setAction(Intent.ACTION_SEND);
        sendIntent.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_TEXT, "This is my text to send.");
        sendIntent.setType("text/plain");
       startActivity(Intent.createChooser(sendIntent, "Share text to..."));
    }
}