Android Share Action Provider

Welcome to my Blog.
In this post, I am going to talk about android share action provider.



What is Share Action Provider?
Share action provider is just a provider for share some action. we just create a that enable data sharing and also to show a submenu with sharing activities if the hosting item is placed on the overflow menu.

In this post, I will show you how can you add this feature in your app. Let's start What we need to do for adding share action provider? It's very simple step. We just need to create a view on menu.xml file add reference it from the java class. That's it.

First, create an XML file on res -> menu folder

<item android:id="@+id/action_share"
        android:title="@string/share"
        app:showAsAction="ifRoom"
        app:actionProviderClass="android.support.v7.widget.ShareActionProvider"/>

Code analysis:
1. android:id -> we need an id for the call this view
2. android:title -> set a title, for this view3. app:showAsAction -> here I use "If room". Also available some other action too.
here a short list of action and their work

• If room -> if there is enough space on action bar then it will 
• show always -> it will show this view always in the action bar 
• never -> for this action, this view will never show
• collapseActionView -> This item's action view collapses to a normal menu item. 
• with text -> this will show the icon with text that defines on android: title on the XML file.

4. actionProviderClass -> here we need to set action provider class. We are working on Share action provider, so we need to set-

android.support.v7.widget.ShareActionProvider

Time for java code-
Create a global variable of Share action Provider Class;

ShareActionProvider myShareActionProvider;

Now come on onCreateOptionsMenu() method initializes this by using getActionProvider() method class of MenuItemCompat

myShareActionProvider = (ShareActionProvider) MenuItemCompat.getActionProvider(shareItem);

set a share intent

myShareActionProvider.setShareIntent(createShareIntent());

Creta a method that's return Intent

private Intent createShareIntent() {
        Intent shareIntent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_SEND);
        shareIntent.setType("text/plain");
        String s = "welocme to android sketchPad";
        shareIntent.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_TEXT, s);

        return shareIntent;
    }

Now we create another method that name update share action provider: note: don't forget to cheek shareActionProvider is not null

private void resetShareActionProvider(String word) {
        if (myShareActionProvider != null) {
            Intent shareIntent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_SEND);
            shareIntent.setType("text/plain");
            shareIntent.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_TEXT, word);

            myShareActionProvider.setShareIntent(shareIntent);
        }
    }

Now you can use this method anywhere you want and update intent for this share action provider.

Intent shareIntent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_SEND);
shareIntent.setType("text/plain");
String s = "welome to Android SketchPad";
shareIntent.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_TEXT, s);

if (myShareActionProvider != null) {
    myShareActionProvider.setShareIntent(shareInten);
}
       

-keep class android.support.v7.widget.ShareActionProvider { *; }