Receive simple data from other apps

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Just as an app can send data to other apps, it can also receive data from other apps as well. Think about how users interact with your application and what data types you want to receive from other applications. For example, a social networking application might be interested in receiving text content, like an interesting web URL, from another app.

Users of other apps frequently send data to your app through the Android Sharesheet or the intent resolver. Apps that send data to your app must set a MIME type for that data. Your app can receive data sent by another app in the following ways:

• An Activity with a matching intent-filter tag in the manifest
• Sharing Shortcuts published by your app.

Direct Share targets are deep links into a specific Activity within your app. They often represent a person or a group, and the Android Sharesheet shows them. For example, a messaging app can provide a Direct Share target for a person that deep links directly into a conversation with that person. See Provide Direct Share targets for detailed instructions.

Support MIME types

Ideally, an app must be able to receive the widest possible range of MIME types. For example, a messaging app designed for sending text, images, and video ideally supports receiving text/*, image/* and video/*. Here are a few common MIME types for sending and receiving simple data in Android.

Refer to the IANA official registry of MIME media types.

Make great share targets

When a user taps on a share target associated with a specific activity they should be able to confirm and edit the shared content before using it. This is especially important for text data.

Receive data with an activity

Receiving data with an activity involves updating your manifest, handling the incoming content, and ensuring that the user recognizes your app.

Update your manifest

Intent filters inform the system which intents an app component accepts. Similar to how you constructed an intent with an ACTION_SEND action in the Sending simple data to other apps lesson, you create intent filters to receive intents with this action. You define an intent filter in your manifest using the <intent-filter> element. For example, if your app handles receiving text content, a manifest that includes one or more images of any type would look like the following snippet:

<activity android:name=".ui.MyActivity" >
    <intent-filter>
        <action android:name="android.intent.action.SEND" />
        <category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT" />
        <data android:mimeType="image/*" />
    </intent-filter>
    <intent-filter>
        <action android:name="android.intent.action.SEND" />
        <category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT" />
        <data android:mimeType="text/plain" />
    </intent-filter>
    <intent-filter>
        <action android:name="android.intent.action.SEND_MULTIPLE" />
        <category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT" />
        <data android:mimeType="image/*" />
    </intent-filter>
</activity>

When another app tries to share any of these things by constructing an intent and passing it to startActivity(), your application is listed as an option in the Android Sharesheet or intent resolver. If the user selects your app, this starts the corresponding activity (.ui.MyActivity in the preceding example). It's then up to you to handle the content appropriately within your code and UI.

Handle the incoming content

To handle the content delivered by an Intent, call getIntent() to get the Intent object. Once you have the object, you can examine its contents to determine what to do next. If this activity can be started from other parts of the system (such as the launcher), take this into consideration when examining the intent.

Take extra care to check the incoming data, you never know what some other application may send you. For example, the wrong MIME type might be set, or the image being sent might be extremely large. Also, remember to process binary data in a separate thread rather than the main ("UI") thread.

override fun onCreate(savedInstanceState: Bundle?) {
    ...
    when {
        intent?.action == Intent.ACTION_SEND -> {
            if ("text/plain" == intent.type) {
                handleSendText(intent) // Handle text being sent
            } else if (intent.type?.startsWith("image/") == true) {
                handleSendImage(intent) // Handle single image being sent
            }
        }
        intent?.action == Intent.ACTION_SEND_MULTIPLE
                && intent.type?.startsWith("image/") == true -> {
                handleSendMultipleImages(intent) // Handle multiple images being sent
        }
        else -> {
            // Handle other intents, such as being started from the home screen
        }
    }
    ...
}

private fun handleSendText(intent: Intent) {
    intent.getStringExtra(Intent.EXTRA_TEXT)?.let {
        // Update UI to reflect text being shared
    }
}

private fun handleSendImage(intent: Intent) {
    (intent.getParcelableExtra<Parcelable>(Intent.EXTRA_STREAM) as? Uri)?.let {
        // Update UI to reflect image being shared
    }
}

private fun handleSendMultipleImages(intent: Intent) {
    intent.getParcelableArrayListExtra<Parcelable>(Intent.EXTRA_STREAM)?.let {
        // Update UI to reflect multiple images being shared
    }
}

void onCreate (Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    ...
    // Get intent, action and MIME type
    Intent intent = getIntent();
    String action = intent.getAction();
    String type = intent.getType();

    if (Intent.ACTION_SEND.equals(action) && type != null) {
        if ("text/plain".equals(type)) {
            handleSendText(intent); // Handle text being sent
        } else if (type.startsWith("image/")) {
            handleSendImage(intent); // Handle single image being sent
        }
    } else if (Intent.ACTION_SEND_MULTIPLE.equals(action) && type != null) {
        if (type.startsWith("image/")) {
            handleSendMultipleImages(intent); // Handle multiple images being sent
        }
    } else {
        // Handle other intents, such as being started from the home screen
    }
    ...
}

void handleSendText(Intent intent) {
    String sharedText = intent.getStringExtra(Intent.EXTRA_TEXT);
    if (sharedText != null) {
        // Update UI to reflect text being shared
    }
}

void handleSendImage(Intent intent) {
    Uri imageUri = (Uri) intent.getParcelableExtra(Intent.EXTRA_STREAM);
    if (imageUri != null) {
        // Update UI to reflect image being shared
    }
}

void handleSendMultipleImages(Intent intent) {
    ArrayList<Uri> imageUris = intent.getParcelableArrayListExtra(Intent.EXTRA_STREAM);
    if (imageUris != null) {
        // Update UI to reflect multiple images being shared
    }
}

Updating the UI after receiving the data can be as simple as populating an EditText, or it can be more complicated like applying an interesting photo filter to an image. It's up to your app what happens next.

Ensure users recognize your app

Your app is represented by its icon and label in the Android Sharesheet and intent resolver. These are both defined in the manifest. You can set activity or intent filter labels to provide more context.

As of Android 10 (API level 29), the Android Sharesheet only uses icons set in the manifest on your application tag. Android ignores icons set on intent-filter and activity tags.