Anymote Protocol Data Message Usage

Question

The Google TV Anymote protocol defines several requests that can be sent to a GTV device.

I've used the fling event, which basically get translated into an intent on GTV, with the URI specified in the request message being the URI in the intent.

I'm not sure though where one would use a data event, or how it gets interpreted when sent to a GTV device.

Is it possible to send some arbitrary data to a specific application (setup a filter)? If not, what is it used for? Is it just converted into an intent as well?

Here is the message definition:

// Sends a string and a type to interpret this string
message Data {
    // The type of data sent to the box
    required string type = 1;

    // The data sent to the box
    required string data = 2;
}

Answer 1

The basic usecase for the Data proto is to send text to an TextView. In the Google TV Remote code, the KeyboardActivity captures text input:

http://code.google.com/p/google-tv-remote/source/browse/src/com/google/android/apps/tvremote/KeyboardActivity.java

The AnymoteSender sets up the transmission via the Anymote Protocol:

http://code.google.com/p/google-tv-remote/source/browse/src/com/google/android/apps/tvremote/protocol/AnymoteSender.java#163

And the DeviceMessageAdapter, in the Anymote code, binds the data to the Data proto:

http://code.google.com/p/anymote-protocol/source/browse/src/com/google/anymote/device/DeviceMessageAdapter.java#120

The server (Google TV) converts these to KeyEvents and passes them to the foreground activity.