BroadcastReceiver doesn't receive Intents from outer links

Question

I have a BroadcastReceiver that has intent filters like these:

    <receiver
        android:name="com.mytestpackage.ExternalLinksBroadcastReceiver"
        android:exported="true"
        android:enabled="true">
        <intent-filter>
            <action android:name="android.intent.action.VIEW"/>
            <category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT"/>
            <category android:name="android.intent.category.BROWSABLE"/>

            <data
                android:host="test.me"
                android:path="/static/"
                android:scheme="http"/>
        </intent-filter>
    </receiver>

I want to open links like these from the broadcast receiver.

http://test.me/static/someone-1111"

OnReceive of the receiver I extract user id from the Intent and try to show the corresponding profile inside the app.

This doesn't work. Right now when I click on a shared link in Facebook or somewhere else with the scheme from above and the link is from our website it doesn't recognize the installed app.

Answer 1

If you want to open your app via custom url scheme you need to declare the scheme for an activity, not for a broadcast receiver. Try something like this:

<activity
  android:name=".MainActivity"
  android:label="@string/app_name">
  <intent-filter>
    <action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN"/>
    <category android:name="android.intent.category.LAUNCHER"/>
  </intent-filter>
  <intent-filter>
    <action android:name="android.intent.action.VIEW"/>
    <category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT"/>
    <category android:name="android.intent.category.BROWSABLE"/>
    <data
            android:host="test.me"
            android:path="/static/"
            android:scheme="http"/>
  </intent-filter>
</activity>