Android send Image with Keyboard

Question

I'm trying to implement a Keyboard app which should be capable of sending images to the current activity (Whatsapp, Messaging app, etc).

Is there a way to actually achieve this? Of course it would be limited to apps which accept images, but I wonder what's the best approach.

Tried using a StringBuilder with an ImageSpan but couldn't get it to work. I was wondering if there was a better way. Using Intents maybe?

Answer 1

Finally achieved this by sending Intents to the foreground app, but this has limitations: messaging apps usually require to select the conversation, which breaks the user flow and adds an unnecessary step (unless they expose a way to send the intent to a specific chat).

This can be achieved as follows:

Intent sendIntent = new Intent();
    sendIntent.setAction(Intent.ACTION_SEND);
    sendIntent.addFlags(Intent.FLAG_GRANT_READ_URI_PERMISSION);
    sendIntent.addFlags(Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK);
    sendIntent.setPackage(getCurrentAppPackage(context, editorInfo));
    return sendIntent;

Where getCurrentAppPackage(...) is a method that returns the foreground Activity given a Context and an EditorInfo, which you can get from your IME implementation when binded to an input field.

public String getCurrentAppPackage(Context context, EditorInfo info) {
    if(info != null && info.packageName != null) {
        return info.packageName;
    }
    final PackageManager pm = context.getPackageManager();
    //Get the Activity Manager Object
    ActivityManager aManager =
            (ActivityManager) context.getSystemService(Context.ACTIVITY_SERVICE);
    //Get the list of running Applications
    List<ActivityManager.RunningAppProcessInfo> rapInfoList = aManager.getRunningAppProcesses();
    //Iterate all running apps to get their details
    for (ActivityManager.RunningAppProcessInfo rapInfo : rapInfoList) {
        //error getting package name for this process so move on
        if (rapInfo.pkgList.length == 0) {
            Log.i("DISCARDED PACKAGE", rapInfo.processName);
            continue;
        }
        try {
            PackageInfo pkgInfo = pm.getPackageInfo(rapInfo.pkgList[0], PackageManager.GET_ACTIVITIES);
            return pkgInfo.packageName;
        } catch (PackageManager.NameNotFoundException e) {
            // Keep iterating
        }
    }
    return null;
}

Update: Commit Content API was added on API level 25 (and support library makes it work from API 13). More info here: https://developer.android.com/preview/image-keyboard.html Until apps start implementing it, the method above can be used as fallback.