Possibility for Fake NFC(Near Field Communication) Launch

Question

I am working on Near Field Communication for reading data from NFC Tags. I don't have NFC supported Android Mobile and NFC Tags to test the Application i created .

I want to know whether it is possible to Launch my App through intent filter(Should assume NFC tag is detected from my device)

My Manifest Snippet :

 <activity
        android:name=".ServerActivity"
        android:label="@string/app_name"
        android:screenOrientation="portrait" >
        <intent-filter>
            <action android:name="android.nfc.action.NDEF_DISCOVERED" />

            <category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT" />

            <data
                android:host="abc.com"
                android:pathPrefix="/aaap"
                android:scheme="http" />
        </intent-filter>
    </activity>

My Activity Snippet :

@Override
protected void onNewIntent(Intent intent) {
    if (NfcAdapter.ACTION_TAG_DISCOVERED.equals(intent.getAction())) {
        Toast.makeText(getApplicationContext(), "ACTION_TAG_DISCOVERED",
                Toast.LENGTH_LONG);
        Tag tag = intent.getParcelableExtra(NfcAdapter.EXTRA_TAG);
    }
}

Answer 1

I may be completely missing the point here, but from what I understood, you basically want to fire off an intent that will get picked by the receiver you declared in your manifest, right? Have you tried setting up a very simple test app that does exactly this using the sendBroadcast(...) method?

Intent exampleIntent = new Intent("android.nfc.action.NDEF_DISCOVERED");
sendBroadcast(exampleIntent)

You can add any extra data to the Intent per your requirements.

Answer 2

After some research on NFC i found that we can read/write NFC Tags without NFC enabled device.. But answer is so simple.. It's nothing but playing with Intents :

We have to call this snippet for invoking NFC :

    final Intent intent = new Intent(NfcAdapter.ACTION_TAG_DISCOVERED);
    intent.putExtra(NfcAdapter.EXTRA_NDEF_MESSAGES, "Custom Messages");
    startActivity(intent);

Also we should register our Activity to Android System through Manifest file like below :

Manifest.xml

 <activity
        android:name="TagViewer" >
        <intent-filter>
            <action android:name="android.nfc.action.TAG_DISCOVERED" />
            <category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT" />
        </intent-filter>
 </activity>

Same way if you have more than one Activity using same action we will be getting chooser from which we can launch our Desired Activity.

Receiving inside Activity :

TagViewer .java

    if (NfcAdapter.ACTION_TAG_DISCOVERED.equals(getIntent().getAction())) {
        Log.v("NFC Launched","NFC Launched");           
    }

We have this sample in Developer Sample Demo.

Answer 3

Have a look at Open NFC. They have a NFC simulator that migh be useful to attach to your android simulator. Never used it with Android, but I've used it with BlackBerry simulators.

EDIT:
Last version 4.4.1 for Android ICS released.