The Android Intent system
Almost every developer knows what an Android Intent system is, but we will explain it a bit and lay out the basic principles required to understand the app links feature. The Android Intent system can be found in the Android platform; this allows the passing of data in a small, simple package. Intent means that we want to perform an action. You may already know about the basic intents:
startActivity()startActivityForResult()startService()sendBroadcast()
The following figure shows an Android Intent system for the startActivity() and onCreate() intents:
Source: http://developer.android.com/guide/components/intents-filters.html
The Android Intent system is a flexible mechanism that is used to enable apps to handle content and requests. Multiple apps may declare matching URI (short for Uniform Resource Identifier) patterns in their intent filters. When a user clicks on a web link that does not have a default launch handler, the platform may display a dialog for the...
