从我的应用程序中打开第三方应用程序

Question

I am doing some research before developing my application. Just to give you a brief about what I intend to do is the following:

1. Develop a cross platform app (ios,android,blackberry,windows phone and pc)
2. This app will be linked to various third party apps (can be either installed or need to be installed).

I've already found some info how to open third party apps: ios and android. I am searching for other services (windows phone and blackberry) and could not find anything or I'm typing the wrong keywords in Google search.!!

For Iphone I found the following:

1. itms-apps://
2. http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pages/id361309726?mt=8&uo=4
3. Use the iTunes Link Maker at http://itunes.apple.com/linkmaker to create a link to any app.

For Android:

http://developer.android.com/distribute/googleplay/promote/linking.html#OpeningPublisher

Both the above are linking to App store and Play Store accordingly. How can I link to an already installed app if the app is installed.

Thanks

Answer 1

For Android ONLY

The Android ecosystem is based on Intent and ContentProvider . The only thing you need to know to launch activity / application is either a intent action and/or a content provider Uri .

Let's take an example: you have the IMDB id of a movie and you want to open up the detail page through the IMBD Android app. In that case you can do something like:

Intent detail = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW, Uri.parse("imdb://<imdb_id>"));
if (context.getPackageManager().resolveActivity(test, 0) != null) {
    startActivity(this, detail);
} else {
    Toast.makeText(this, "IMDB not installed", Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show();
}

because the IMDB app provides a content provider with the prefix imdb:// .

If the app provides an activity with a defined action filter, you just need to know this exact action like such:

startActivity(this, new Intent("target.app.action"));

Few years ago, there was a website that listed all open intents that you could use. It still exists but seems abandoned => http://www.openintents.org/