What is an Intent in Android

Question

What is an Intent in Android  Can someone elaborate with an example  What are the types of Intents  and why we are using them  Why are Intents so important in Android

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An Intent is a class that is bind the information for doing some actions   example passing data one activity to another actvity when user perform such actions in   present activity

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what is Intent     It is a kind of message or information that is passed to the components  It is used to launch an activity  display a web page  send sms  send email etc    There are two types of intents in android      Implicit Intent   Explicit Intent   Implicit intent is used to invoke the system components     Example   Intent i   newIntent android content Intent ACTION VIEW Uri parse    http   www amazon com        startActivity i     Explicit intent is used to invoke the activity class      Example   Intent intent   newIntent  this  SecondActivity class    startActivity intent     you can read more   http   www vogella com tutorials AndroidIntent article html intents overview http   developer android com reference android content Intent html

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An intent is basically a way of passing data from one activity to other activity

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Intents are a way of telling Android what you want to do  In other words  you describe your intention  Intents can be used to signal to the Android system that a certain event has occurred  Other components in Android can register to this event via an intent filter  Following are 2 types of intents 1 Explicit Intents used to call a specific component  When you know which component you want to launch and you do not want to give the user free control over which component to use  For example  you have an application that has 2 activities  Activity A and activity B  You want to launch activity B from activity A  In this case you define an explicit intent targeting activityB and then use it to directly call it  2 Implicit Intents used when you have an idea of what you want to do  but you do not know which component should be launched  Or if you want to give the user an option to choose between a list of components to use  If these Intents are send to the Android system it searches for all components which are registered for the specific action and the data type  If only one component is found  Android starts the component directly  For example  you have an application that uses the camera to take photos  One of the features of your application is that you give the user the possibility to send the photos he has taken  You do not know what kind of application the user has that can send photos  and you also want to give the user an option to choose which external application to use if he has more than one  In this case you would not use an explicit intent  Instead you should use an implicit intent that has its action set to ACTION SEND and its data extra set to the URI of the photo  An explicit intent is always delivered to its target  no matter what it contains  the filter is not consulted  But an implicit intent is delivered to a component only if it can pass through one of the component s filters Intent Filters If an Intents is send to the Android system  it will determine suitable applications for this Intents  If several components have been registered for this type of Intents  Android offers the user the choice to open one of them  This determination is based on IntentFilters  An IntentFilters specifies the types of Intent that an activity  service  orBroadcast Receiver can respond to  An Intent Filter declares the capabilities of a component  It specifies what anactivity or service can do and what types of broadcasts a Receiver can handle  It allows the corresponding component to receive Intents of the declared type  IntentFilters are typically defined via the AndroidManifest xml file  For BroadcastReceiver it is also possible to define them in coding  An IntentFilters is defined by its category  action and data filters  It can also contain additional metadata  If a component does not define an Intent filter  it can only be called by explicit Intents  Following are 2 ways to define a filter 1 Manifest file If you define the intent filter in the manifest  your application does not have to be running to react to the intents defined in it   s filter  Android registers the filter when your application gets installed  2 BroadCast Receiver If you want your broadcast receiver to receive the intent only when your application is running  Then you should define your intent filter during run time  programatically   Keep in mind that this works for broadcast receivers only

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What is an Intent   An Intent is basically a message that is passed between components  such as Activities  Services  Broadcast Receivers  and Content Providers   So  it is almost equivalent to parameters passed to API calls  The fundamental differences between API calls and invoking components via intents are   API calls are synchronous while intent-based invocations are asynchronous  API calls are compile-time binding while intent-based calls are run-time binding   Of course  Intents can be made to work exactly like API calls by using what are called explicit intents  which will be explained later  But more often than not  implicit intents are the way to go and that is what is explained here  One component that wants to invoke another has to only express its intent to do a job  And any other component that exists and has claimed that it can do such a job through intent-filters  is invoked by the Android platform to accomplish the job  This means  neither components are aware of each other s existence but can still work together to give the desired result for the end-user  This invisible connection between components is achieved through the combination of intents  intent-filters and the Android platform  This leads to huge possibilities like   Mix and match or rather plug and play of components at runtime  Replacing the inbuilt Android applications with custom developed applications  Component level reuse within and across applications  Service orientation to the most granular level  if I may say   Here are additional technical details about Intents from the Android documentation   An intent is an abstract description of an operation to be performed  It can be used with startActivity to launch an Activity  broadcastIntent to send it to any interested BroadcastReceiver components  and startService Intent  or bindService Intent  ServiceConnection  int  to communicate with a Background Service  An Intent provides a facility for performing late runtime binding between the code in different applications  Its most significant use is in the launching of activities  where it can be thought of as the glue between activities  It is basically a passive data structure holding an abstract description of an action to be performed  The primary pieces of information in an intent are   action The general action to be performed  such as ACTION VIEW  ACTION EDIT  ACTION MAIN  etc  data The data to operate on  such as a person record in the contacts database  expressed as a Uri    Learn more  Lars Vogel s tutorial ProgrammerGuru article Common intents

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Intents are used to initiate another activity from one activity It is basically used for several purposes such as sending data to another activity from one activity and for triggering purposes   They are basically of two types   Implicit intents  Explicit intents    As a beginner I know this much I think this will give some basic idea about android intents

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From the paper Deep Dive into Android IPC Binder Framework atAndroid Builders Summit 2013 link  The intent is understood in some small but effective lines   Android supports a simple form of IPC inter process communication  via intents Intent messaging is a framework for asynchronous communication among Android components  activity  service  content providers  broadcast receiver   Those components may run in the same or across different apps  i e  processes  Enables both point-to-point as well as publish subscribe messaging domains The intent itself represents a message containing the description of the operation to be performed as well as data to be passed to the recipient s     From this thread a simple answer of android architect Dianne Hackborn states it as a data container which it actually is   From android architecture point of view    Intent is a data container that is used for inter process communication  It is built on top of the Binder from android architecture point of view

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An Intent is an  intention  to perform an action  in other words      a messaging object you can use to request an action from another app component   An Intent is basically a message to say you did or want something to happen  Depending on the intent  apps or the OS might be listening for it and will react accordingly  Think of it as a blast email to a bunch of friends  in which you tell your friend John to do something  or to friends who can do X   intent filters    to do X  The other folks will ignore the email  but John  or friends who can do X  will react to it   To listen for an broadcast intent  like the phone ringing  or an SMS is received   you implement a broadcast receiver  which will be passed the intent  To declare that you can handle another s app intent like  take picture   you declare an intent filter in your app s manifest file   If you want to fire off an intent to do something  like pop up the dialer  you fire off an intent saying you will

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In a broad view  we can define Intent as     When one Activity wants to start another activity it creates an Object   called Intent that specifies which Activity it wants to start

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After writing a single activity  there comes a need to transition to another activity to perform another task either with or without information from the first activity   Android platform allows transition by means of Intent Interface   Words are taken from here  Using Intent Demo and i suggest you to go through this example  because they also have provided a code file as well  so you can use it and easily understand the same

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An intent is an abstract description of an operation to be performed  It can be used with startActivity to launch an Activity  broadcastIntent to send it to any interested BroadcastReceiver components  and startService Intent  or bindService Intent  ServiceConnection  int  to communicate with a background Service   For more details see these links    1    http   developer android com reference android content Intent html  2   http   developer android com guide topics intents intents-filters html  3   http   www vogella de articles AndroidIntent article html  there are many more articles are available

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Android Intent  Android Intent lets you navigate from one android activity to another  With examples  this tutorial also talks about various types of Android intents   Android Intent can be defined as a simple message objects which is used to communicate from 1 activity to another   Intents define intention of an Application   They are also used to transfer data between activities   An Android Intent can be used to perform following 3 tasks     Open another Activity or Service from the current Activity Pass data between Activities and Services Delegate responsibility to another application  For example  you can use Intents to open the browser application to display a URL    Intent can be broadly classified into 2 categories  There are no keywords for this category and just a broad classification of how android intents are used   Explicit Android Intent  Explicit Android Intent is the Intent in which you explicitly define the component that needs to be called by Android System    Intent MoveToNext   new Intent  getApplicationContext    SecondActivity class     Implicit Android Intent  Implicit Android Intents is the intent where instead of defining the exact components  you define the action you want to perform  The decision to handle this action is left to the operating system  The OS decides which component is best to run for implicit intents   Let us see an example       Intent sendIntent   new Intent        sendIntent setAction Intent ACTION SEND     For more information you may visit below     http   developer android com reference android content Intent html

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According to their documentation      An Intent is an object that provides runtime binding between separate components  such as two activities   The Intent represents an app   s  intent to do something   You can use intents for a wide variety of tasks  but most often they   re used to start another activity    Here is the link with example  http   developer android com training basics firstapp starting-activity html BuildIntent  As the document describes  in order to start an activity  you also need to understand what activity is  use the intent like below      Called when the user clicks the Send button    public void sendMessage View view        Intent intent   new Intent this  DisplayMessageActivity class       EditText editText    EditText  findViewById R id edit message       String message   editText getText   toString        intent putExtra EXTRA MESSAGE  message       startActivity intent

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An Android application can contain zero or more activities  When your application has more than one activity  you often need to navigate from one to another  In Android  you navigate between activities through what is known as an intent  You can pass some data to the activity which you want to start through intent  by using putExtra

[android] What is an Intent in Android?

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