Ionic/Cordova: Add intent-filter using config.xml

I had the same problem, but the idea of installing (and then remembering or documenting the dependency on) a bunch of npm dependencies and then using a big general-purpose hook was far too heavyweight for what I needed.

Hooks can be simple shell scripts which is often a much more straightforward way of modifying text files. In my case I only needed to add an intent-filter to the MainActivity activity which is a trivial job for sed; I just created the file hooks/after_prepare/020_add_moozvine_intents.sh with the content:

#!/usr/bin/env zsh

MANIFEST=${0:h}/../../platforms/android/AndroidManifest.xml
[[ -e $MANIFEST ]] || { print "Manifest not found at $MANIFEST." ; exit 1; }

grep -q HANDLE_MOOZVINE_NOTIFICATION $MANIFEST && { print "Manifest already modified. Nothing to do."; exit 0; }

AFTER_LINE='android:name="MainActivity"'
ADDITION='\
        <intent-filter>\
            <action android:name="HANDLE_MOOZVINE_NOTIFICATION" />\
            <category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT" />\
        </intent-filter>
';

sed -i -e "/${AFTER_LINE}/a${ADDITION}" $MANIFEST

Job done. You can use a similar approach for any simple textual modifications to generated files.


Resolved!

I can't do it using Ionic or Cordova: it's a PhoneGap feature (see this Stackoverflow answer)

I can do it in two other ways:

  1. Using a custom Cordova plugin
  2. Using a hook

I prefered the second way. I found an interesting hook for my purposes. Note: Rembember to install some packages:

npm install lodash elementtree plist --save-dev

Sadly this hook merges tags. So I wrote a little changed version of this hook: see here. You can put this hook in /hooks/after_platform_add.

Now I have my intent-filter configuration in config.xml:

  <platform name="android">
    <config-file target="AndroidManifest.xml" parent="application/activity">
      <intent-filter><!-- ... --></intent-filter>
    </config-file>
    <!-- ... -->
  </platform>

And I can update AndroidManifest.xml regenerating android platform:

ionic platform remove android && ionic platform add android

Cordova 9 now directly supports using <config-file> and <edit-config> sections, like in plugin.xml files.

Without using any plugin or hook, you can directly do the following, for example, to add an intent filter to AndroidManifest.xml:

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?>
<widget id="yourdomain.app" version="1.7.8"
  xmlns="http://www.w3.org/ns/widgets"
  xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
  xmlns:cdv="http://cordova.apache.org/ns/1.0">
  <!-- ... -->
  <platform name="android">
    <!-- ... -->
    <config-file parent="application" target="AndroidManifest.xml">
      <activity android:label="webIntentFilter" android:name="yourdomain.app">
        <intent-filter android:autoVerify="true">
          <action android:name="android.intent.action.VIEW" />
          <category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT" />
          <category android:name="android.intent.category.BROWSABLE" />
          <data android:host="yourdomain.com" android:scheme="https" />
        </intent-filter>
      </activity>
    </config-file>
  </platform>
  <!-- ... -->
</widget>

Don't forget to add attribute xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" into your <widget> tag to avoid unbound prefix error at build.

Tags:

Cordova

Ionic

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