android.os.TransactionTooLargeException when executing queryIntentActivities

Question

I am using a device with Android 5.0.1 and when execute the function:

Intent mainIntent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_MAIN, null);
List<ResolveInfo> apps = manager.queryIntentActivities(mainIntent,0);

An exception of type TransactionTooLargeException is thrown .... I cannot use the flag: MATCH_DEFAULT_ONLY because I can't be limited to only those activities that support the CATEGORY_DEFAULT. Looks that the problem is related with the amount of data returned, like many related issues that I found here at stackoverflow ... Is there a way to break this response? Or is there a query, equivalent, or a combination of flags that allow get the same results making more than one query? I am asking because is not clear to me the meaning of flag = 0 in documentation: https://developer.android.com/reference/android/content/pm/PackageManager.html#queryIntentActivities(android.content.Intent , int)

May be I can query more than once, with different queries, and combine the results?

Answer 1

You could chunk your query by being a bit more specific with how you form your Intent , and do multiple queries rather than 1 lump sum query. Right now, you're querying basically every application (potentially multiple for each) on the device (since everything that can launch will have a android.app.action.Main action), which goes over your allocation of the ~1 MB shared buffer parcel limit causing the exception:

From the docs:

{ action=android.app.action.MAIN } matches all of the activities that can be used as top-level entry points into an application.

{ action=android.app.action.MAIN, category=android.app.category.LAUNCHER } is the actual intent used by the Launcher to populate its top-level list.

So, adding a category narrows the search results. If you need everything of action type "android.app.action.Main", use that as the action, then iterate over an additional set of categories ex sudo code:

List<ResolveInfo> activities = new ArrayList<ResolveInfo>()

String[] categories = new String[] { android.app.category.LAUNCHER, additional... }

for(String category: categories){
   Intent mainIntent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_MAIN)
   mainIntent.addCategory(category)
   List<ResolveInfo> matches = manager.queryIntentActivities(mainIntent, 0);  //You might want to use a better @ResolveInfoFlag to narrow your ResolveInfo data
   if(!matches.isEmpty()){
      activities.addAll(matches)
   }
}

You should also probably do a try catch, because when doing a MATCH_ALL, there's still no guarantee that the query won't be too large. There might be appropriate flags to help with this, but I'm not familiar with your use case.