Android Question Open other app per click onto homescreen widget?

[Marcophono]

Hello!

I wrote a complex weather app in Cordova. Meanwhile a lot of users asked for a homescreen widget. Unfortunatelly there seems to be no way to add a native homescreen widget to a Cordova app. (there was a project "Microsoft Ace" which wanted to mix cordova and native code but before fixing the last bugs for a working homescreen widget Microsoft stopped that project in dec 2016)
I do not want to rewrite the whole app with 20,000 lines of code in B4A but want to offer a widget for my cordova app anyway. I was thinking about a workaround in B4A and want to ask here if this is possible generally or not. My idea is to write a new Android app in B4A which does offer nothing more than a homescreen widget. But if the user interacts with that widget another app, my cordova app, ist launched. In result the user must install two apps. One for the widget (written in B4A) and the "real" weather app (written in Cordova). Is that possible? Or are there restrictions on Android OS side?

Best regards
Marc

 

[Erel]

Yes, it is possible and it is very simple.

You can start another application with this code:

Dim pm As PackageManager
StartActivity(pm.GetApplicationIntent("your.package"))

 

[Marcophono]

Erel, you made my day!

 

[Marcophono]

Really cool. It took just an hour to build a working widget which opens my main app per touch. But what I still was not able to find out is how to bring animations into the widget. I saw the library for decoding animated gifs but I think there must be better technologies meanwhile. How is something like to see here (Youtube link) realized? Are that standard widget technics?

Best regards
Marc

 

[Erel]

You will need to use a timer and update the widget bitmap.

 

[Marcophono]

Aha? Okay, I will make some researches in that way. Thank you, Erel!

Best regards
Marc