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I an wanting to create a Java application that is installed on multiple platforms (Windows,Mac OS, Linux) as a part of this install I wish to register a URL protocol handler, so that my app loads when links are clicked.
i.e. I want something like this: myprotocol://example.com
Is there any sort of consolidated way of doing this? Or some sort of framework that extrapolates the difference across the different OS's.
As an alternative, using the JDIC project you can associate files with specific applications.
This may be useful for your proposes. But instead of registering the whole protocol ( which may be somehow complicated ) you may register the file type only.
So, a link like this:
<a href="http://example.com/file.dan">Dan File</a>
May be opened with your application.
Here's the sample code to register your app to open that file type:
AssociationService serv = new AssociationService();
Association logassoc = new Association();
logassoc.addFileExtension("DAN");
logassoc.addAction( new Action("open", "C:\\WINDOWS\\JAVA.EXE -jar C:\\dan.jar %1"));
Here's the complete article: Understanding JDIC File-Type Associations
I would recommend that you use Java Webstart rather than try to invent a new link scheme. It's already supported by any browser that has Sun Java installed.
In Firefox you can register your own protocol.
This article describes more about the protocol registration. Probably you could automate it from there.
You'll probably need to do this in a platform-specific fashion. Here's how to do it in OS X