Callback URL example with Instagram OAuth
suggest changeOne of the use cases of callback URLs is OAuth. Let us do this with an Instagram Login: If the user enters their credentials and clicks the Login button, Instagram will validate the credentials and return an access_token
. We need that access_token
in our app.
For our app to be able to listen to such links, we need to add a callback URL to our Activity
. We can do this by adding an <intent-filter/>
to our Activity
, which will react to that callback URL. Assume that our callback URL is appSchema://appName.com
. Then you have to add the following lines to your desired Activity
in the Manifest.xml file:
<action android:name="android.intent.action.VIEW" />
<category android:name="android.intent.category.BROWSABLE"/>
<data android:host="appName.com" android:scheme="appSchema"/>
Explanation of the lines above:
<category android:name="android.intent.category.BROWSABLE"/>
makes the target activity allow itself to be started by a web browser to display data referenced by a link.<data android:host="appName.com" android:scheme="appSchema"/>
specifies our schema and host of our callback URL.- All together, these lines will cause the specific
Activity
to be opened whenever the callback URL is called in a browser.
Now, in order to get the contents of the URL in your Activity
, you need to override the onResume()
method as follows:
@Override
public void onResume() {
// The following line will return "appSchema://appName.com".
String CALLBACK_URL = getResources().getString(R.string.insta_callback);
Uri uri = getIntent().getData();
if (uri != null && uri.toString().startsWith(CALLBACK_URL)) {
String access_token = uri.getQueryParameter("access_token");
}
// Perform other operations here.
}
Now you have retrieved the access_token
from Instagram, that is used in various API endpoints of Instagram.