Types of data intent in android

Android data intent types Overview: Types of Data Intents in Android

A basic concept in Android development is the Intent data. Intent data is used in android application to supply information to another application. Sometimes it supplies to other parts of the Android operating system. It enables the opening of another activity, start a service, send a broadcast, or share the data within components. It Understand the different kinds of data intents and how they are used quite essential for developing robust and responsive Android applications.

What is an Intent data in Android?

Android Intent data is a messaging object used to request an action from another app component. The primary use of an intent data is to:

Start an activity: it opens a new screen or performs an action.
Start a service: It starts up the service to perform a background task
Deliver a broadcast: Intent data sends a broadcast message to other apps or to the system.
Transfer of data: Sharing data among an app’s various components.

Types of intent in android

There are two types of intent in android which are

Implicit Intent
Explicit Intent

Intents are explicit or implicit. Explicit and Implicit :

Explicit Intents:It Explicitly declare which component should be launched.
Implicit Intents: The implicit Declare the general action to be performed, and then the system will determine which appropriate component can handle the intent.

Types of android Data Intents types

Intents in Android are associated with data deal with the action of data transfer or management in different data formats. They are classified into different types according to the type of data they deal with and also according to the specific action which may be performed with them.

Text Data Intents
Image Data Intents
Audio Data Intents
Video Data Intents
File Data Intents
Custom Data Intents

Let us go into details of the types of data intent types

1. Text Data Intents

Intentions of Text Data are used for handling plain text data. This is like sending a message or sharing text content. Usually, the intent data is to allow a user to share or send text data over other applications or services.

Common Actions:

ACTION_SEND.

Example Usage:
Assuming you want to build a text data intent to share text:

Intent sendIntent = new Intent();
sendIntent.setAction(Intent.ACTION_SEND);
sendIntent.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_TEXT, "Hello, this is a text message!");
sendIntent.setType("text/plain");

// Verify that the intent will resolve to an activity
if (sendIntent.resolveActivity(getPackageManager()) != null) {
    startActivity(sendIntent);
}

In this script, the ACTION_SEND button intent is used to share text. The EXTRA_TEXT extra is added to the intent in order to mention the text data.

2.Image Data Intents

Image data intents are used in the handling of image data. It enable the user to select, view, or share images amongst different apps. Image data intent can be used for a number of activities like opening the camera to take an image. It serves the user for selecting an image from the gallery, or sharing an image to social network sites.

Common Actions:

ACTION_PICK: This is the action to pick an image from the gallery.
ACTION_VIEW: This action can be used to view an image using an image viewer app.
ACTION_SEND: This action is used to share an image to other apps.

Example of Usage:
Here is an example for how you can create an image data intent to pick an image from the gallery

Intent pickImageIntent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_PICK);
pickImageIntent.setType("image/*");

// Verify that the intent will resolve to an activity
if (pickImageIntent.resolveActivity(getPackageManager()) != null) {
    startActivityForResult(pickImageIntent, PICK_IMAGE_REQUEST);
}

The above example fires an intent ACTION_PICK to open the Gallery and allow the user to pick an image. In this case, you can set images only by using the setType method.

How to flash android phone with hands

3. Audio Data Intents | Android data intent types

Audio data intents are used to handle audio data – that is, while playing some audio file or recording audio. It can be used to invoke the default audio player, or used in sharing an audio file, or to start recording audio.

Common Intents:

ACTION_VIEW: means view, probably for seeing some audio file using somebody’s app related to audio playing.
ACTION_PICK: To pick the audio file from the storage.
ACTION_GET_CONTENT: It allows the user to pick an audio file from a content provider.

Example Usage:
This is an example to create an audio data intent in order to play an audio file:

Intent playAudioIntent = new Intent();
playAudioIntent.setAction(Intent.ACTION_VIEW);
playAudioIntent.setDataAndType(Uri.parse("file:///sdcard/sample_audio.mp3"), "audio/*");

// Verify that the intent will resolve to an activity
if (playAudioIntent.resolveActivity(getPackageManager()) != null) {
    startActivity(playAudioIntent);
}

The code above is used to play an audio file with the ACTION_VIEW intent. URI and its MIME type of the audio file are associated with setDataAndType method.

4. Video Data Intents | Android data types

Intents Data is used to perform operations on video data like playing or recording a video. Video data intent enable users to play videos using the default video player or share videos on social media, or even record new video content.

Common Actions:

ACTION_VIEW: This can be used to view/play a video file with a video player app.
ACTION_PICK: Intended to allow the users to select a video file from the storage
ACTION_GET_CONTENT: Intended for asking the user to select a video file from a Content Provider

Sample Usage:
Below is a sample code snippet that builds and play a video file Intent file.

Intent playVideoIntent = new Intent();
playVideoIntent.setAction(Intent.ACTION_VIEW);
playVideoIntent.setDataAndType(Uri.parse("file:///sdcard/sample_video.mp4"), "video/*");

// Verify that the intent will resolve to an activity
if (playVideoIntent.resolveActivity(getPackageManager()) != null) {
    startActivity(playVideoIntent);
}

In the above example, to play a video file use the ACTION_VIEW intent. For this example, setDataAndType provides URI and MIME type for the video file.

5. Intents for data files | Types of android data types

The type File Data Intents is utilized to work with generic files-opening, sharing, or selecting from storage. This type of intents Data can provide an interface that enables the user to select a file. It also open a file using any given application, or share the file to other applications.

Common Actions:

ACTION_GET_CONTENT: This action is utilized in allowing users to select a file from a content provider.
ACTION_VIEW: This action is used to view or open the file by using an appropriate app.
ACTION_SEND: This action is used to send the file to other apps.

Example Usage:
The code below shows an example of how to create a file data intent to pick a file from storage:

Intent pickFileIntent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_GET_CONTENT);
pickFileIntent.setType("*/*");
pickFileIntent.addCategory(Intent.CATEGORY_OPENABLE);

// Verify that the intent will resolve to an activity
if (pickFileIntent.resolveActivity(getPackageManager()) != null) {
    startActivityForResult(pickFileIntent, PICK_FILE_REQUEST);
}

In this example, ACTION_GET_CONTENT intent is used to invoke the file picker and allow the user to choose any kind of file. The setType is having its arguments set to "*/*". It means that is has been set that all kinds of files will be shown.

6. Custom Data Intents

Action intents are used when an application is use to defines a custom action. It can also be used for data type that cannot be covered by the standard intent actions. These intents are very useful, and they are for sending data between different components of the same app . Sometimes it is for sending data between different apps that understand the custom action or data type.

Common Actions:

Custom actions: It is provided by the developer of the app. And it is any string value that represents a function or data type.

Example Usage:
This is how to make a custom data intent to deliver custom data to another activity in the same application.

Intent customIntent = new Intent("com.example.CUSTOM_ACTION");
customIntent.putExtra("key", "value");

// Verify that the intent will resolve to an activity
if (customIntent.resolveActivity(getPackageManager()) != null) {
    startActivity(customIntent);
}

A custom intent action "com.example.CUSTOM_ACTION" is define here so that the intent carries an extra value with a key-value pair. An activity is registered to handle the "com.example.CUSTOM_ACTION" action to handle the said custom intent.

Conclusion of android data intent types

To understand the different android data intents types and their proper utilization within applications; it lies at the core of building Android applications that are capable of interacting with other applications and components. If you have an intent data type like this in your application, you will be able to have a rich, interactive experience-shared data.

For detailed information about intents and how to use them, see the official Android documentation