A framework for communicating with Android apps from the browser

Abstract: With the recent growth of the mobile market, companies want to target mobile devices while at the same time keeping product development costs low. One way to do this is to develop web applications, which are accessed from a mobile de- vice’s web browser, instead of native applications. The same web application can then be used on different platforms such as Android and iOS. However, devices such as smart phones and tablets often include cameras and sensors that a web ap- plication may want to access, but which are only accessible from native applica- tions. A framework was developed that enables web applications to communicate with native Android applications. Native applications are launched by clicking a link in the browser, and the result produced is made available to the web applica- tion through a HTTP POST request or a local web server running on the device. Key characteristics of the framework include ease of extension and the ability to enable secure (SSL) communication if desired. The ZXing Barcode Scanner ap- plication was integrated with the framework so that a scanned barcode can be dis- played in the browser. Performance measurements were conducted measuring the time taken from clicking a link to start a test application to the result being avail- able in the browser. The mean times measured were between 323 and 394 mil- liseconds. This indicates that the method used is sufficiently fast to not detract from the user experience. Future work could expand on the measurements or per- form a feature and performance comparison with PhoneGap.