Four different ways of opening a web page in Android

FIRST POST OF 2009!!

Threw this Android Activity together really quickly to see if I understood the different ways of getting a web page to launch.  The first three examples perform the same functionality, the Linkify.addLink call builds a means of launching an Intent.ACTION_VIEW.  The fourth example loads the url into a WebView in the layout.

Just as a note, it seems that the API is pretty sensitive to using “www.mgmblog.com” vs “http://www.mgmblog.com”, I think I’ve got it correct where it matters, you may have to do some experimenting on your own to make sure you know where it makes a difference…works correctly.

Here’s the layout, code in one fell swoop:
layout/goto_web.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:orientation="vertical"
    android:layout_width="fill_parent"
    android:layout_height="fill_parent">

	<TableLayout
		android:layout_width="fill_parent"
	        android:layout_height="wrap_content">

		<TableRow>
			<TextView
		    	android:id="@+id/link1_lbl"
		        android:layout_width="fill_parent"
		        android:layout_height="fill_parent"
		        android:text="Link 1"
		        android:paddingRight="5dip"/>

		 	<!--
		 		autoLink='web' is the attribute that does the magic
		 		of turning the text into a web link
		 	 -->
			<TextView
		    	android:id="@+id/link1_view"
		        android:layout_width="fill_parent"
		        android:layout_height="fill_parent"
   		        android:autoLink="web"
		        android:text="www.mgmblog.com"/>
		</TableRow>

		<TableRow>
			<TextView
		    	android:id="@+id/link2_lbl"
		        android:layout_width="fill_parent"
		        android:layout_height="fill_parent"
		        android:text="Link 2"
		        android:paddingRight="5dip"/>

			<TextView
		    	android:id="@+id/link2_view"
		        android:layout_width="fill_parent"
		        android:layout_height="fill_parent"/>
		</TableRow>

		<TableRow>
		 	<Button
		 	android:id="@+id/link3_btn"
		        android:layout_width="fill_parent"
		        android:layout_height="fill_parent"
		        android:text="Link 3"/>
		</TableRow>

		<TableRow>
		 	<Button
		 	android:id="@+id/link4_btn"
		        android:layout_width="fill_parent"
		        android:layout_height="fill_parent"
		        android:text="Link 4"/>

			<WebView
		    	android:id="@+id/link4_view"
		        android:layout_width="fill_parent"
		        android:layout_height="fill_parent"/>
		</TableRow>

	</TableLayout>

</LinearLayout>

GotoWeb.java

public class GotoWeb extends Activity
{

    /** Called when the activity is first created. */
    @Override
    public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState)
    {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        setContentView( R.layout.goto_web );

        // method 2
        TextView tv = (TextView)findViewById( R.id.link2_view );
        // make sure that setText call comes BEFORE Linkify.addLinks call
        tv.setText("www.mgmblog.com");
        Linkify.addLinks( tv, Linkify.WEB_URLS );

        // method 3
        Button link3Btn = (Button)findViewById( R.id.link3_btn );
        link3Btn.setOnClickListener( new View.OnClickListener()
        {
		public void onClick(View v)
		{
			Uri uri = Uri.parse( "http://www.mgmblog.com" );
			startActivity( new Intent( Intent.ACTION_VIEW, uri ) );
		}
        });

        // method 4
        Button link4Btn = (Button)findViewById( R.id.link4_btn );
        link4Btn.setOnClickListener( new View.OnClickListener()
        {
		public void onClick(View v)
		{
		        WebView wv = (WebView)findViewById( R.id.link4_view );
		        wv.loadUrl( "http://www.mgmblog.com" );
		}
        });

    }
}

Don’t forget to add the following to your AndroidManifest.xml file, and it must be a child of the <manifest> element

<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.INTERNET" />

There ya’ go, Link 1 seems like the easiest, you simply use the android:autoLink to state that the TextView holds a URI to launch.  Obviously you’ll want to externalize all the strings into your values/strings.xml file, I didn’t want to have to include another file.  For more info, check out the WebView API