Talk about Historify and Aggregating Apps

1. Historify and Other Aggregating
Apps
Friedger Müffke
@fmdroid
#openintents
www.openintents.org support@openintents.org Droidcon London 2011,
7 October 2011

2. OpenIntents.org
● Add „book a table“ to calendar
50 lines of code
● Add „journey schedule“ to shopping list app
5 lines of code
● Add „AR browser“ to post office app
1 library + 25 lines of code
@fmdroid – Historify and Aggregating Apps Droidcon London, 7 October 2011

3. Open Apps
1.Declare intent filters in your Manifest with
CATEGORY_DEFAULT
2.Publish your intent filters on
open-android-apps.appspot.com
3.Explore intents and which apps do offer the
corresponding functionality
@fmdroid – Historify and Aggregating Apps Droidcon London, 7 October 2011

4. Study
● Analysize of apps in application store Appoke
● ~1500 apps (paid + free)
● 350 apps declare intent filter other than launcher
● Many wired and wrong intent filter
● 1% of apps declare useful intent filter
Looking for more apps stores to participate!
@fmdroid – Historify and Aggregating Apps Droidcon London, 7 October 2011

5. Google Summer
of Code 2011
● Global program by Google
● Student stipends for OSS projects
● 175 organizations, first year for OpenIntents
● 57 applications received
● 2 students
● Accepted projects: Sensor Simulator, Historify
@fmdroid – Historify and Aggregating Apps Droidcon London, 7 October 2011

6. Historify
@fmdroid – Historify and Aggregating Apps Droidcon London, 7 October 2011

7. Possible Methods
● Server-side
e.g. Google Reader
● Broadcast intents
e.g. Locale
● One content provider for all
Intent.ACTION_INSERT_FROM_META_DATA
e.g. OI Shopping List
● Many content providers with same structure
e.g. Historify, Dependency Manager, Search
@fmdroid – Historify and Aggregating Apps Droidcon London, 7 October 2011

8. Historify – SharedSource
● Many content providers
● 3rd party app registers via intent
1. Declare source, i.e. content provider authority
2. All declared sources are querried
3. Results are filtered and displayed
@fmdroid – Historify and Aggregating Apps Droidcon London, 7 October 2011

9. Historify – QuickPost
● One content provider for all
● No content provider by 3rd-party app
1. declares event meta data
2. uses intents to insert event
@fmdroid – Historify and Aggregating Apps Droidcon London, 7 October 2011

10. Historify – SharedSource
● Many content providers
● 3rd party app registers via intent
1. Declare source, i.e. content provider authority
2. All declared sources are querried
3. Results are filtered and displayed
@fmdroid – Historify and Aggregating Apps Droidcon London, 7 October 2011

11. Historify – more features
● Internal providers for SMS and telephony
● Documentations on
code.google.com/p/openintents
● SonyEricsson Timescape Compatibility Module
● HistorifyBridge library
@fmdroid – Historify and Aggregating Apps Droidcon London, 7 October 2011

12. Tips and Tricks
● Choose appropriate method
● Let 3rd parties declare intent filter
● Declare meta data in Android Manifest.xml on
application level
● AggregateCursor to dynamically add results
(see DependencyManager)
@fmdroid – Historify and Aggregating Apps Droidcon London, 7 October 2011

13. More info
Web site:
www.openintents.org
Developer group:
http://groups.google.com/group/openintents
Code repository:
http://openintents.googlecode.com
@fmdroid – Historify and Aggregating Apps Droidcon London, 7 October 2011