Creating custom Text Selection actions in a Flutter app

Question

I want to transmit the text selected in an other app to my Flutter app.

e.g. I am reading a page on a website, an ebook reader or some text in an other application, I select a piece of text from the app and I send it to my app by clicking on a custom element from the context menu which appears after selecting it.

In many sources I found that this is possible to be done in Android by using ACTION_PROCESS_TEXT But the problem is that I have no idea about how to integrate and use this feature in my app.

I found and installed Intent Package which pretends to be able to add this functionality (here they write that they support it)

In the image below you can see in the context menu "Web Search" and "Search Wikipedia" - what I want is to be able to add "My App Action" which will open my Flutter app and do some staff with the selected text.

The code of my current main.dart app:

import 'package:flutter/material.dart';
import 'package:intent/intent.dart';

void main() {
  runApp(MyApp());
}

class MyApp extends StatelessWidget {
  // This widget is the root of your application.
  @override
  Widget build(BuildContext context) {
    return MaterialApp(
      title: 'Flutter Demo',
      theme: ThemeData(
        // This is the theme of your application.
        //
        // Try running your application with "flutter run". You'll see the
        // application has a blue toolbar. Then, without quitting the app, try
        // changing the primarySwatch below to Colors.green and then invoke
        // "hot reload" (press "r" in the console where you ran "flutter run",
        // or simply save your changes to "hot reload" in a Flutter IDE).
        // Notice that the counter didn't reset back to zero; the application
        // is not restarted.
        primarySwatch: Colors.deepOrange,
      ),
      home: MyHomePage(title: 'My Words'),
    );
  }
}

class MyHomePage extends StatefulWidget {
  MyHomePage({Key key, this.title}) : super(key: key);

  // This widget is the home page of your application. It is stateful, meaning
  // that it has a State object (defined below) that contains fields that affect
  // how it looks.

  // This class is the configuration for the state. It holds the values (in this
  // case the title) provided by the parent (in this case the App widget) and
  // used by the build method of the State. Fields in a Widget subclass are
  // always marked "final".

  final String title;

  @override
  _MyHomePageState createState() => _MyHomePageState();
}

class _MyHomePageState extends State<MyHomePage> {
  int _counter = 0;

  void _incrementCounter() {
    setState(() {
      // This call to setState tells the Flutter framework that something has
      // changed in this State, which causes it to rerun the build method below
      // so that the display can reflect the updated values. If we changed
      // _counter without calling setState(), then the build method would not be
      // called again, and so nothing would appear to happen.
      _counter++;
    });
  }

  @override
  Widget build(BuildContext context) {
    // This method is rerun every time setState is called, for instance as done
    // by the _incrementCounter method above.
    //
    // The Flutter framework has been optimized to make rerunning build methods
    // fast, so that you can just rebuild anything that needs updating rather
    // than having to individually change instances of widgets.
    return Scaffold(
      appBar: AppBar(
        // Here we take the value from the MyHomePage object that was created by
        // the App.build method, and use it to set our appbar title.
        title: Text(widget.title),
      ),
      body: Center(
        // Center is a layout widget. It takes a single child and positions it
        // in the middle of the parent.
        child: Column(
          // Column is also a layout widget. It takes a list of children and
          // arranges them vertically. By default, it sizes itself to fit its
          // children horizontally, and tries to be as tall as its parent.
          //
          // Invoke "debug painting" (press "p" in the console, choose the
          // "Toggle Debug Paint" action from the Flutter Inspector in Android
          // Studio, or the "Toggle Debug Paint" command in Visual Studio Code)
          // to see the wireframe for each widget.
          //
          // Column has various properties to control how it sizes itself and
          // how it positions its children. Here we use mainAxisAlignment to
          // center the children vertically; the main axis here is the vertical
          // axis because Columns are vertical (the cross axis would be
          // horizontal).
          mainAxisAlignment: MainAxisAlignment.center,
          children: <Widget>[
            Text(
              'You have pushed the button this many times:',
            ),
            Text(
              '$_counter',
              style: Theme.of(context).textTheme.headline4,
            ),
          ],
        ),
      ),
      floatingActionButton: FloatingActionButton(
        onPressed: _incrementCounter,
        tooltip: 'Increment',
        child: Icon(Icons.add),
      ), // This trailing comma makes auto-formatting nicer for build methods.
    );
  }
}

P.S. I just started learning Flutter and Mobile App development, so please do not judge me hard.

Answer 1

I have made a plugin to implement this.

Please check out: action_process_text Plugin .

First, include it in your project.

dependencies:
  action_process_text: <latest version>

Run pub get and get packages.

Add this to AndroidManifest.xml in the android\app\src\main\ folder.

 <activity android:name="com.example.action_process_text.ActionProcessTextPlugin"
            android:label="Action_Text" android:theme="@style/LaunchTheme">
            <intent-filter>
                <action android:name="android.intent.action.PROCESS_TEXT" />
                <data android:mimeType="text/plain"/>
                <category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT" />
            </intent-filter>
   </activity>

Change the android:label from Action_Text to the action text that you want to display.

Then import the package to use it.

import 'package:action_process_text/action_process_text.dart';

Now, use the constructor of the widget to initialize the action_process_text. ActionProcessText.getInputText is used to get the selected text from the android action.

Example snippet:

class MainPage extends StatefulWidget {
  @override
  _MainPageState createState() => _MainPageState();
}

class _MainPageState extends State<MainPage> {
  _MainPageState() {
    initActionProcessText();
  }

  Future<void> initActionProcessText() async {
    inputText = await ActionProcessText.getInputText;
    setState(() {});
  }

  String inputText = '';

  @override
  Widget build(BuildContext context) {
    return Scaffold();
  }
  }

And check out my article on this plugin at: Article on action_process_text .

Please support this package by letting fellow flutter developers know about it and feel free to open issues/bugs and PRs on my github repo: action_process_text Source .