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URL Handler/API rev1

Latest revision as of 13:56, 23 March 2011

This article is out-of-date, and needs to be updated. Please see the talk page for discussion.

This document describes the first revision of the hildon_uri_* API that was added in IT-2007. It has been revised and expanded in rev 2, see API revision 2 for information about that.

The API brings functionality for actions to be performed based on the scheme in the URI, such as "http" or "callto". There can be one or more actions for a scheme, and a default action for each scheme.

This setup closely follows the hildon_mime_* API setup, and the Freedesktop standard for desktop files is reused here as well.

This is be done by adding custom sections to the desktop files, listing the URI actions for the application. This has the advantage that applications already have the build and Debian packaging mechanisms in place.

Make sure to read the desktop entry specification

The utility update-desktop-database from desktop-file-utils is used to handle the new fields that have been added.

[edit] Desktop file format

See the following example:

[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Type=Application
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=Instant messenger
Comment=Talk to your friends
Icon=im.png
X-Osso-Service=com.nokia.im
X-Osso-URI-Actions=callto;jabber;msn;

[X-Osso-URI-Action Handler callto]
Method=call_to
Name=call_this_contact
TranslationDomain=some_app 

[X-Osso-URI-Action Handler jabber]
Method=jabber_chat
Name=send_message
TranslationDomain=some_app 

[X-Osso-URI-Action Handler msn]
Method=msn_chat
Name=send_message
TranslationDomain=some_app

The X-Osso-URI-Actions key in the [Desktop Entry] specifies the available actions that the application provides. Then for each action there is a corresponding groups, that specifies the properties of that action.

The keys are:

• Method: the D-Bus method to call on the service
• Name: the name of the action
• TranslationDomain: the translation domain to use when translating the name

[edit] Default action

Just like for the MIME open functionality in upstream GNOME and in Maemo, there is a way to specify which application is the default if there are many that support the same URI scheme. The defaults file is located in $(prefix)/share/applications/uri-action-defaults.list.

[edit] Updating the desktop database

The 'update-desktop-database' command parses all the *.desktop files pointed to and generates a cache for them to speed up the lookup. This generation is usually done in the post-inst phase in a Debian package, in addition to "make install" in the makefile target:

 update-desktop-database $prefix/share/applications

Note that the update-desktop-database tool in Maemo has been patched to generate the cache for the added data. An example of a cache file, that resides in $(prefix)/share/applications:

[X-Osso-URI-Action Cache]
callto=im.desktop;gossip.desktop;gaim.desktop;
http=browser.desktop
https=browser.desktop

[edit] Implementation details

When activating an action, the corresponding desktop file is used to lookup the D-Bus message and service name. The message is sent to the service. The arguments to the message consist of a an array of strings, which are the URIs passed. Note that the current implementation only sends one URI in the array, since the API only allows for one.