In this post, we will take a quick look at the WebActivity API. WebActivities are basically parts of apps that register with the system. When a user wants to perform a certain action that many apps can accomplish (like share, choose an image, take a photo, etc), the system will present the user with all the registered applications that can accomplish that action.

Starting an Activity

In order to launch one of these activities we create a MozActivity. The parameter is an object with the following

• name : the name of the action the user wants to perform
• data : information about the action. Usually contains type

Here is a list of all the activities that Gaia offers. Let’s try to show the user an activity to create a contact. It’s done as follows

var activity = new MozActivity({
	name: "new",
	data: {
		type: "webcontacts/contact"
	}
});

activity.onsuccess = function() {
	console.log("WebActivity reported success");
};

activity.onerror = function() {
	console.log(this.error);
};

And that’s it! You can try the demo but the WebActivity API is not supported by any web browser. Source code is here.