Problems/Questions: Write them right below...

Description:
Android come with a "toolbox" shell and some tools to interact with the runtime/dalvikvm. One of these tools is "am", an Activity/Intent Manager/Messenger. am can be used to tryout intent from the command line, or to start activities (even with custom parameters).

The "full" documentation of am.

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./adb shell
# am
usage: am [start|instrument]
       am start [-a <ACTION>] [-d <DATA_URI>] [-t <MIME_TYPE>]
                [-c <CATEGORY> [-c <CATEGORY>] ...]
                [-e <EXTRA_KEY> <EXTRA_VALUE> [-e <EXTRA_KEY> <EXTRA_VALUE> ...]
                [-n <COMPONENT>] [-D] [<URI>]
       am instrument [-e <ARG_NAME> <ARG_VALUE>] [-p <PROF_FILE>]
                [-w] <COMPONENT>

"start" will kick an intent. We just need to know what kind of intent we need.

Let's assume you have an activity "de.rtjava.andtest.myview.A1" and the package "de.rtjava.andtest" then you'll start the activity with

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adb shell
# am start -n de.rtjava.andtest/de.rtjava.andtest.myview.A1

or with

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adb shell am start -n de.rtjava.andtest/de.rtjava.andtest.myview.A1

This will start the requested activity. Ideal for ant or shell scripts (including .bat files)

So how about an location?

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adb shell am start 'geo:0,0?q=Munich,Germany'

Or the web?

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adb shell am start 'http://www.wikipedia.org'

Or edit your first contact?

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adb shell am start -a android.intent.action.EDIT -n 'com.google.android.contacts/com.google.android.contacts.EditContactActivity' -d 'content://contacts/people/1'

Don't forget to look at the LogCat to find out what intents are sent.

[EDIT]Reworked and added more samples[/EDIT]

cool, this command should be run in Linux?

derek_lan wrote:cool, this command should be run in Linux?

No. adb is available in your android sdk's tools directory. I've tested it under Linux, but it should work with Mac OS X and Windows.
Just open a command line window (Terminal in OS X, <windows key>+<r>, <c><m><d><return> under XP/Vista), navigate to the tools directory (cd <full path to android sdk>tools). Afterwards adb (or ./adb for Mac OS/Linux) will work

Hello rtreffer,

Big thx for this Tutorial
Looking forward in seeing more

Regards,
plusminus

Hi,
Its really a nice work.. Doing most of the activities thro command line..

plusminus wrote:Big thx for this Tutorial

Thanks for prettifying... It was quite low quality - just a 2 min. post of what I've discovered in >2h try and error

We are currently try to start 5+ map apps at the same time, so eclipse/adt/launch isn't an option....

Thanks

can i use am tool to send email or record the call with a recorder in audio format ?