Parsing the screenshot that Chrome for Android includes via ACTION_SEND intent

This content originally appeared on Modern Web Development with Chrome and was authored by Paul Kinlan

<p>You know when you are reading the News and you see something about something you are working on and you have a "Huh?!?! We did that?" moment.</p> <p>That happened to me today with an article about <a href="http://www.androidpolice.com/2015/03/13/chrome-v42-automatically-includes-a-screenshot-when-you-share-a-webpage/">on Android Police about Chrome 42</a> about Chrome now including a screenshot with the intent. I worked a lot on Chrome 42 and I had no idea about this. We were working on Push, Notifications and also App Install banners that sometimes someone's great feature is missed.</p> <p>Well it turns out sharing Screenshots from Chrome is not new. I have heard folklore that the old Android Browser used to have an Extra field called "EXTRA_SHARE_SCREENSHOT" - but I have no idea if that is true or not.</p> <p>In lieu of us actually getting documentation, samples, "thought leadership" and all the other things (read: gubbins) that you expect a Developer Relations for Chrome organisation to do I might as well bite the bullet and create something.</p> <p>It's quite simple. Like most apps on Android that want to share data, when the user clicks "Share to" in Chrome an ACTION_SEND Intent is fired with a url and a title. Chrome also uses an Extra as a stream containing the URI of the Screenshot.</p> <p>The code that Chrome uses to trigger the intent is roughly this:</p> <pre><code>Intent intent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_SEND); intent.setType("text/plain"); intent.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_SUBJECT, titleOfPage); intent.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_TEXT, urlOfPage); intent.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_STREAM, screenshotUri); // This is actually a URI to a file that stores the screenshot </code></pre> <p>Under the hood the system is taking a screenshot and then saving it to a file and then sharing that URI for the file to the other apps.</p> <blockquote> <p>I don't always create Android Apps, but when I do it's all for Chrome and the Web.</p> </blockquote> <p>A huge number of apps handle <a href="http://developer.android.com/training/sharing/receive.html">recieving Share intents</a>. I'll only quickly run over this, because I suspect most Android developers are intimately familiar with this.</p> <p>Add an intent filter to the approriate activity in your Manifest:</p> <pre><code><intent-filter> <action android:name="android.intent.action.SEND" /> <category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT" /> <data android:mimeType="text/plain" /> </intent-filter> </code></pre> <p>In the onCreate method of the activity that should handle the intent you need to parse the data. I will say that I am making a lot of magical assumptions that every intent of type "text/plain" has the URL of the page etc, but hold in with me, I am a web developer after all.</p> <pre><code>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)) { String titleOfPage = intent.getStringExtra(Intent.EXTRA_SUBJECT); if (titleOfPage != null) { // Update UI to show we know the Title of the Page. } String urlOfPage = intent.getStringExtra(Intent.EXTRA_TEXT); if (urlOfPage != null) { // Update UI to reflect url of the text being shared. } // Handle single image being sent Uri imageUriOfPage = (Uri) intent.getParcelableExtra(Intent.EXTRA_STREAM); if (imageUriOfPage != null) { // Update UI to reflect image being shared. Here you would need to read the // data from the URI. } } } } </code></pre> <p>If you are interested in the change that sparked the article, look at <a href="https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=455996">bug 455996</a> and see the <a href="https://codereview.chromium.org/972293003/diff/40001/chrome/android/java/src/org/chromium/chrome/browser/share/ShareHelper.java">diff</a>, I have also found this <a href="http://code.tutsplus.com/tutorials/android-sdk-receiving-data-from-the-send-intent--mobile-14878">tutsplus tutorial</a> helpful..</p>

This content originally appeared on Modern Web Development with Chrome and was authored by Paul Kinlan