Proposal to add Android App Widget

tessus · 2020-05-31T17:07:26.080Z

fstanis:

I don’t think this is (easily) possible (specifically, having a separate app that only contains a widget). This would require a more sophisticated mechanism of getting Joplin data, not only making the whole thing more complicated (to the point where maintenance burden on both me and the Joplin app would be too high), but there would be both UX and security implications (i.e. users would have to setup and maintain a sync in two apps just to have a widget).

Ok, I thought it would actually be less work, since I thought, you'd be reading from a certain (shared) memory location. If this makes it more complicated, then it makes no sense of course.

fstanis:

So I guess this proposal is more of a “here’s how we can test the waters” rather than “here’s a fully fleshed out feature”. Hope that makes sense.

Yep, it does. It looks like Laurent is on board.That is, if his 2 concerns are addressed.

roman_r_m · 2020-05-31T17:07:39.650Z

fstanis:

Edit: missed @roman_r_m’s reply while writing this - glad to hear you’ve already had a prototype for deep links! Mind sharing the code (if it’s in a repo)?

There you go: GitHub - roman-r-m/joplin at mobile-deep-linking

And let me know if you have any questions. While I personally don't care much for widgets as a Joplin user, it looks like an interesting thing to work on.

laurent · 2020-05-31T17:39:08.051Z

I assume we need to define a URL format for deep linking? Like joplin://note/<note_id>? If so, is there any standard format we can implement? I seem to remember there was one (someone mentioned it on this forum), but can’t find it now.

Right now, joplin://<item_id> is how resources and notes are linked internally, but we can use something different if it’s more standard.

roman_r_m · 2020-05-31T17:52:42.473Z

Android only requires to specify the name (like joplin://) everything else is up to developers.
I think something like this might make sense:

note/<id> to refer to a note
folder/<id> for folders
tag/<id> for tags

tessus · 2020-05-31T19:52:32.344Z

Joplin knows what type of resource (note, notebook, tag) the id is anyway, so we don’t really need to specify the type in the URI. We can, but it’s not necessary. Unless we want different behavior between:

joplin://NOTEHASH
joplin://note/NOTEHASH

But I’m not sure what different actions we could choose. On the other side we can always do something like this in the future:

joplin://HASH[/action]

laurent · 2020-05-31T19:52:56.427Z

The standard I was looking for is called “x-callback-url” - http://x-callback-url.com/examples/

Bear for example supports it: https://bear.app/faq/X-callback-url%20Scheme%20documentation/

So I guess we could have something similar. At first, just a URL to open a note, and another one to return a list of the latest notes:

Open a note:

joplin://x-callback-url/open-note?id=7E4B681B
List notes:

joplin://x-callback-url/list-notes?order=updated_time&limit=5

In fact, I think that should be just a translation layer above the API, that way there’s no need to re-implement all the end-points.

tessus · 2020-05-31T20:04:02.780Z

Right, although I want to point out that APIs usually do not use parameters as in GET requests. APIs use well-defined endpoints, except maybe for search queries.

So open note, would rather look like this:

joplin://x-callback-url/open/7E4B681B

But the list call is the way you mentioned it:

joplin://x-callback-url/list?order=updated_time&limit=5

roman_r_m · 2020-05-31T20:10:22.287Z

Isn’t x-callback-url mostly an iOS thing?
Though ultimately the format doesn’t matter all that much and x-callback-urls seems flexible enough for Joplin.

laurent · 2020-05-31T20:16:47.663Z

roman_r_m:

Isn’t x-callback-url mostly an iOS thing?

Yes somehow the doc mentions iOS only, although I don't see why it couldn't be used in other contexts including desktop apps. Or maybe I'm missing something and this scheme is useful only for iOS.

Though ultimately the format doesn’t matter all that much

Ideally we should follow existing standards as it means the app is easier to use, and we don't need to re-invent the wheel with a new standard. But if the only one is the x-callback-url and it's perhaps only used for iOS then indeed we don't have to follow it.

Personally I'd prefer something that maps directly to the API, so it would be something like what @tessus mentioned above - joplin://notes/ID

roman_r_m · 2020-05-31T20:21:49.925Z

This is the closest to specification for Android that I was able to find: https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/manifest/data-element

Not much there, says it must be a URI and/or a mime-type. It’s generic enough that your x-callback-url matches it.

tyleroconnell · 2020-12-07T00:41:35.060Z

@fstanis were you still thinking about implementing this?

Hemanti · 2021-06-17T11:27:06.602Z

Are you guys still thinking about this? It would be awesome to have this widget as it would make editing notes so much faster and simpler on Android. It would be really useful as especially on the move, I usually don't have much time to add some thoughts to a note.

laurent · 2021-06-17T11:41:13.771Z

A first draft of the widget was implemented in this pull request but it wasn't finished: Android: adds "recent notes" widget by fstanis · Pull Request #3458 · laurent22/joplin · GitHub

didymus · 2021-10-12T16:44:28.035Z

I'd really like if there were a widget that was just an opened notebook.

JoppyLin14 · 2021-10-13T20:43:31.089Z

damn the PR was closed because stale

Hopefully someone picks it up at some point

fstanis · 2021-10-13T20:59:31.286Z

Apologies - something came up and I didn't have time to address the PR issues and I keep meaning to go back to it for... more than a year, it seems.

I'll try to rebase it and open a new PR soon.

Edit: I rebased it and updated the logic slightly.

albert1 · 2022-07-11T19:42:52.862Z

I am holding my fingers crossed. How is the PR doing?

crtkugrrvjy · 2023-10-22T13:35:38.354Z

Interested to hear how this is going

Imperial_Squid · 2023-10-25T05:40:07.484Z

The feature was coded up but ended up not being included due to requiring more maintenance on the mobile side as the mobile and desktop versions diverge

github.com/laurent22/joplin

Comment by laurent22 to Android: adds "recent notes" widget

laurent22:dev ← fstanis:widget-new

@fstanis, sorry for taking so long to get back to you. I've been thinking whethe…r it makes sense to add this feature or not, and I have unfortunately decided I'd rather not. The reason is that I struggle a lot to release new mobile versions (to the point I can't even release 2.9 at all this month), and with more native code and complexity it will reach a point where we can't manage the mobile apps anymore. I appreciate the time you spent on this and wish I could merge, but I'd rather not at this point. Your code may be used as a reference though if we ever decide to add this back.

crtkugrrvjy · 2023-10-25T08:25:08.558Z

Thanks