Sharing Songs with a Custom Intent

We've already seen how to bundle up a song and 0:00 send it by an intent from one activity to another. 0:02 We'll do the same thing here to send it from one app to another but 0:05 we need to create a custom intent and a custom intent filter in a second app. 0:08 Let's do this from detail activity, where we already have a specific song chosen. 0:14 I already created a menu option for us. 0:19 So, all we need to do is define our new intent and 0:21 share it when that menu option is tapped. 0:23 First we need a song though. 0:25 Right now it's only available here in the onCreate method 0:27 because that's the only place we are using it. 0:30 I've also already seated these starter files with a member variable mSong. 0:33 So let's just switch that. 0:37 So we'll change song to mSong, and we'll do the same thing down here, 0:39 mSong, and over here, msong. 0:44 Okay, now let's scroll down to the methods for the menu. 0:47 First is the create method, and then we have the onOptionsItemSelected, 0:51 which is called when a menu item is Selected. 0:56 Now it's good practice to check the item id and then perform actions on it, 1:00 we only have one item id but let's follow the best practice and check it, so 1:04 if we expand menu and look at the detail XML, we see that the id is action_ share. 1:08 Let's go back here at a test, if ItemID = r.id.action_share. 1:15 Then we want to share the data. 1:23 Let's play it safe in here and add a check to make sure that our song isn't null so 1:26 if Msong does not equal null then we will continue. 1:30 Let's create a custom intent CustomIntent equals a new Intent. 1:36 What we really need is a custom action. 1:43 It's just a string value, but we want it to be unique so that it doesn't collide 1:46 with any other custom actions that any other developers might have made up. 1:50 Common practice when we need to use unique values 1:54 is to prefix them with the package name. 1:57 So let's create a constant to use down here. 1:59 Up at the top let's add public static final string. 2:01 And let's call this share_song. 2:06 Let's set this equal to the Packers name, come.teamtreehouse. 2:12 And then I'll follow the intent.ActionPattern used by Android. 2:17 We'll finish with .SHARE_SONG. 2:22 Let's go back down and use this in our constructor. 2:25 So now we pass in SHARE_SONG. 2:33 And now we can add the song as an extra since it's parsable. 2:36 customIntent.putExtra(mSong). 2:39 Whoops I forgot to pass in a key. 2:44 Let's add that. 2:47 We'll use the same one as before, MainActivity.EXTRA_SONG, mSong. 2:48 There we go. 2:52 Finally lets start the activity. 2:54 But rather than just calling regular old startActivity 2:57 let's follow another best practice and use an activity chooser. 3:00 Let's revisit our handy intense and filters page. 3:04 And now we wanna look at Forcing an app chooser. 3:07 The app chooser is a nice feature because it allows the user to pick a specific app 3:11 and even make that app the default for that action for 3:15 given app We just need to create a second intent to create a chooser for 3:17 the actual intent, which we see down here. 3:22 So before we call this, let's create a second intent called intent 3:26 chooser equals intent.createchooser. 3:30 Then we pass in our custom intent and a title for the chooser dialog. 3:36 Let's say Share song, and now we can pass in chooser to start activity. 3:40 Now we can't try this yet because we don't have anything that can receive it, but 3:48 still let's take a look. 3:51 So let's pick one of the songs in our list and. 3:57 We got an error. 4:01 Let's take a look and see. 4:02 So, here in the stack trace we see that it is a NullPointerException and 4:04 it links to the offending line and I see what it is. 4:09 This is a common mistake I made it before. 4:13 We want to call the .equals method and 4:16 the Intent.ACTION said I want to switch it around the order. 4:19 Now right now get action might be N o and it's giving us a No pointer. 4:22 So instead we say intent. 4:26 ACTION_SEND.equals And then we pass in intent.getAction. 4:28 There that's better let's try this again. 4:36 So, now if we click on a song we're taken to the detail view. 4:40 And if we try the menu we can click on share song. 4:45 But now it's hard to see it says no apps can perform this action. 4:50 One of the good things about using a chooser like this is that we avoid 4:54 a runtime exception. 4:57 If we weren't using a chooser we would need to add another check like we did 4:58 before by calling result activity and checking the package manager for handlers. 5:01