I'm developing a small Ionic app that needs some data to be processed and displayed in a certain way. The data are originally stored in a file under XLSX format, then the file's extension is changed to a custom one, let's say .myext (for those who wonder: I do that so all .xlsx files are not automatically opened with my app, which needs a certain data structuration).
I managed, like you can see in a previous post I made about this app, to make my app able to open XLSX files, and then able to open .myext files. Though, I can only open a .myext file with my app automatically when opening it via a file system explorer on my Android device (in my case File Commander). I want the device to automatically open .myext files with my app when the user receive such file in his/her mail inbox (whether dedicated app or browser); when I try to do so, I got a warning saying that no app capable to open such files is available on my device (the file is downloaded anyway and I still can open it via device file system explorer).
I tried to change my intent declaration in the AndroidManifest, without any luck for now (note the android:scheme lines; I tried several combinations, using one, two, three, or all of them at the same time):
<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>
<action android:name="android.intent.action.VIEW" />
<category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT" />
<category android:name="android.intent.category.BROWSABLE" />
<data android:scheme="file" />
<data android:scheme="http" />
<data android:scheme="https" />
<data android:scheme="content" />
<data android:mimeType="*/*" />
<data android:pathPattern=".*\\.myext" />
<data android:host="*" />
</intent-filter>
</activity>
I feel like I'm missing something, or that is not possible to open custom file extension via mail attachment. Do you have any idea to do so?
With the help of user e666 and his/her research, I managed to modify the intents declaration of my Ionic app, which are now like follow in my AndroidManifest.xml (saying my custom file extension is ".myapp"):
<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>
<data android:mimeType="application/vnd.myapp" android:pathPattern=".*\\.myapp" android:scheme="content" />
<data android:mimeType="application/myapp" android:pathPattern=".*\\.myapp" android:scheme="content" />
<data android:mimeType="application/octet-stream" android:pathPattern=".*\\.myapp" android:scheme="content" />
<action android:name="android.intent.action.VIEW" />
<action android:name="android.intent.action.GET_CONTENT" />
<category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT" />
<category android:name="android.intent.category.BROWSABLE" />
</intent-filter>
<intent-filter>
<data android:scheme="file" />
<data android:mimeType="*/*" />
<data android:pathPattern=".*\\.myapp" />
<data android:host="*" />
<action android:name="android.intent.action.VIEW" />
<category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT" />
<category android:name="android.intent.category.BROWSABLE" />
</intent-filter>
</activity>
The first intent is the default one created by the Ionic framework when I added the support of the android platform. The second intent is for file downloaded from a mail attachment. The third and last intent filter is for file opened through a file explorer on the user's android device.
Note that when you fetch the URI in backend Ionic Javascript part of the app, you get a content:// URI when you try to open a .myapp file via mail app or mail browser interface. But the type of content:// URI is not the same if you try to directly open the file with the mail app/brower interface (case 1), and if you download the file THEN try to open it by taping the "download complete" notification (case 2):
content://gmail-ls/myemail@gmail.com/messages/520/attachments/0.1/BEST/falsecontent://downloads/all_downloads/283In the first case, I couldn't find a way to parse this URI to a file:/// URI (which I need to open then read the data in the file).
In the second case, I installed the cordova-plugin-filepath package (that creates the window.FilePath object) and used it as follow to parse the content URI into a file URI (see my previous post on the subject to understand how to feed a file to your app):
window.plugins.webintent.getUri(function (url) { // success getUri
if(url.startsWith('content://')){
window.FilePath.resolveNativePath(url, function(res){
// parse content uri to file uri
var converted_url = "file://" + res;
// extract path and filename from parsed uri
var path = converted_url.slice(0, converted_url.lastIndexOf('/') + 1);
var filename = converted_url.substring(converted_url.lastIndexOf('/') + 1);
// read the file
$cordovaFile.readAsBinaryString(path, filename).then(function (result) { // success readAsBinaryString
// use the data
}, function(error){ //failure readAsBinaryString
// error when trying to open the file
});
}, function(error) { // failure resolveNativePath
// couldn't parse content URI to file URI
});
} else {
// the given URI is not a content URI
}
}, function(error) { // failure getUri
// no URI has been given to the app
}
I hope this will help someone else in the future.