For the PWA on iOS 11 we solved the external third party login opened in Safari by storing the login details in the service worker web cache.
This no longer works in iOS 12 (in beta as of writing). I think this must be because the PWA now has its own service worker cache that it no longer shares with Safari, but I can't confirm this.
Does anyone know if there is a way to share the service worker cache between safari and the PWA? Note that we already tried IndexedDB, but that is not shared, and of course neither are cookies.
As far as I can figure out this means that a PWA is totally sandboxed from safari and there is no way to get a third party login working. Any solutions?
I asked Jonathan Davis(Web Technologies Evangelist for Apple) on twitter about this question. He says Web apps on iOS (“Save to home screen” apps) do not share data stores with Safari. They work as a standalone app separate from Safari and there is no way to share data between them on device.
As a possible solution that may suit you, I propose an article written by Maciej Caputa. Quoting the author the idea is to create a fake endpoint in service worker, which would save data in the cache on POST request and return cached data on GET request. Link on this article https://www.netguru.com/codestories/how-to-share-session-cookie-or-state-between-pwa-in-standalone-mode-and-safari-on-ios.
Hope this answer was helpful!
OAuth login is now possible as of iOS 12.2 (March 2019) as links of external sites now open in a PWA in-app browser and return links point back to the PWA. As a result I am now able to deploy PWA apps on iOS with third-party Auth0 login (it was already working on Android and Windows).
Note however that login session is not shared between Safari and PWA like in earlier versions of iOS.
I learned of this from this article from Maximiliano Firtman.
Related
I plan to develop an app (not sure if I will go with PWA yet) which includes the following "wishlist" scenario:
The user is browsing a website he likes using safari, chrome or any browser
He clicks the share button in that browser, in order to send the webpage url to another app
He selects my PWA
This url is saved in the user's wishlist
Is step 3 possible?
Note: someone asked the exact same question here about Android: Can a progressive web app be registered as a share option in Android?
My question is just the same, except mine is about iOS. I couldn't find any answers to it.
What you're describing is covered by Web Share Target Level 2.
Currently, it can be used with Chrome on some desktop platforms and on Android for installed PWAs.
It's not available on iOS, unfortunately.
Is it possible to share IndexedDB stores and data between a progressive web app (PWA) and stand-alone Safari on iOS? If so, what steps do I need to take to share the stores/data?
My use case is that I have a would-be PWA that uses third party authentication. The normal behavior is that when navigating to the third party authentication page, the PWA automatically opens the page in a new Safari window since it is out of scope. I would like to save the authentication token in IndexedDB from this Safari instance, open my PWA, and then load the token from IndexedDB in my PWA.
I have tested this implementation. It works fine (ie I can read the token from IndexedDB) in Safari standalone, but when I navigate back to my PWA and attempt to read the data, it doesn't exist. This suggests that the stores cannot be shared, but I am looking for a more definitive answer. I find no indication one way or the other in internet searches.
Note: local storage, session storage, and cookies are not shared between Safari and PWAs on iOS, so those solutions do not work which necessitated the use of IndexedDB
Rather than opening a new tab, you can use a pop up, like how it has been beautifully explained here with example and source code.
The key idea used here is window.postMessage, which allows windows and frames to send data across domains to one another.
I've added app links headers for my web site with metadata for my iOS app, but they don't open app when post is clicked. Is app links works as described in documentation in 2017? (https://developers.facebook.com/docs/applinks/add-to-content)
This is expected behavior
Unfortunately it is not currently possible to directly launch a third-party app from within the iOS Facebook app. This is a known issue that Facebook has essentially written off as wontfix. This is still possible in the Android Facebook app, but it's unfortunate they haven't been more transparent about the change to the iOS version because there is quite a bit of confusion about it.
Instagram is a special case because it is a Facebook-owned app and gets different treatment.
But you can work around it
Services like Branch.io (full disclosure: I am on the team) get around this by implementing a judicious combination of App Links, URI schemes, and iOS Universal Links. Essentially what you need to do is open a page in the webview and then have a button or other user-driven CTA event that launches the app from there. It's an extra step for the user, but currently the best workaround. If you just want to be able to post a link that goes into your app when it is installed and otherwise goes to a webpage (or the App/Play Store), then Branch links are definitely your simplest solution.
Branch link routing logic
Existing user of the app will send email to other user.
Other user may have app installed or not installed on their device.
The email will contain some token. Now I want to pass that token to my app. I have read that by deep-linking, its possible. But how will I handle the case when other user have not installed my app yet in their IOS device.
Any help is appreciated.
What you're describing is called Deferred Deep Linking (Deep Linking refers to using a link to open your app, even directly to a specific piece of content, and Deferred means that it works even if the app isn't installed first).
Unfortunately there's no native way to accomplish this yet on either iOS or Android. URL schemes don't work, because they always fail if the app isn't installed. Apple's new Universal Links in iOS 9 get closer, but you'd still have to handle redirecting the user from your website to the App Store
A free service like Branch.io (full disclosure: they're so awesome I work with them) can handle all of this for you though. Here's the docs page covering exactly how to create email links like you described: https://docs.branch.io/pages/emails/email-partners-list/
I have a client that needed to abandon their very poor native app and needs a temporary solution immediately. They have a mobile optimized website and we'd like to deploy an app in the store to replace the current one, and design it such that as soon as you launch it, it either hosts the site within a web browser control, or just redirects the user to a website in the iPhone Safari app. I realize there are subtle differences between the browser control and the actual Safari browsers.
Are there any tools or products that auto create such simple apps, and are there any problems with getting such simple apps approved by Apple?
Sounds like you want to make a hybrid app.
http://www.cocoacontrols.com/posts/a-primer-on-hybrid-apps-for-ios
Your app could just be a UIWebView that shows the website. It's possible that Apple might reject ithe app if there is nothing to it except a web view -- do some research on that possibility.