I have been looking for a way of sharing text strings between 2 Flutter apps I'm working on.
After days of research I was able to share a piece of text between the two apps using the share official plugin on the sharing app side and using Intent filter receiving text/plain for the Android platform. I have been trying to solve it on iOS since then.
There are 2 main problems
App A wants to share a piece of string data so app B has to show up in the options of receiving that data, here my app was not among the options.
If the data is shared with the app B, how will the app B handle the incoming data.
I have already tried several options :
I. URLLauncher plugin official plugin couldn't open custom URL Scheme other than the web, sms stuffs,
II. The share plugin on iOS couldn't show my app among options of receiving text apps . I didn't find docs on how to make my app appear as a receiver of text shared by other apps and how to handle the incoming text in the receiver app.
To show your iOS app in the options of where you want to share it, you can use the plugin uni_links which works on both Android and iOS. You can define a custom scheme which then triggers your app.
Set everything up then create a listener:
import 'dart:async';
import 'dart:io';
import 'package:uni_links/uni_links.dart';
StreamSubscription _sub;
Future<Null> initUniLinks() async {
// Attach a listener to the stream
_sub = getLinksStream().listen((String link) {
// Parse the link and warn the user, if it is not correct
}, onError: (err) {
// Handle exception by warning the user their action did not succeed
});
// NOTE: Don't forget to call
_sub.cancel() in dispose() }
Related
I'm trying to register a custom protocol with electron. I want it to be a redirect location that a website can use to provide an api key (like myprotocol://example/payload=api-key). I have been using electron's registerHttpProtocol and also tried electron's interceptHttpProtocol.
But, when the website tries to redirect to my protocol my electron app doesn't do anything. The website goes to myprotocol://example/payload=api-key, and registers a "page doesn't exist error"--while nothing happens in my app.
This is in a development environment. I've seen some discussion about custom protocols that assume a production environment.
Can you register a custom protocol with electron in development?
Why am I not able to intercept the website's going to the protocol I've set out?
Here's my code:
main.js:
app.whenReady().then(() => {
protocol.registerHttpProtocol('examplep', (request, callback) => {
console.log("examplep", request);
callback('it-worked');
}, (error) => {
if (error) console.error('Failed to register protocol = ' + error)
})
protocol.interceptHttpProtocol("examplep", function (request, callback) { //I've tried both registerHttp... and interceptHttp... methods, so including both here; though I think in practice only one should be required
console.log('intercepted!' + request)
callback(request);
});
})
redirect url provided to website:
'http://examplep'
And I've whitelisted this url on the website itself.
I've also tried related methods registerStringProtocol, interceptStringProtocol, registerFileProtocol, and interceptFileProtocol, without success.
What am I missing?
Sounds like you need to support deep linking fora desktop app, which is done via a Custom URI Scheme and is registered with setAsDefaultProtocolClient.
When your Electron app starts up write this code to register the scheme, on the main side of your app:
const customScheme = 'x-mycompany-myapp';
app.setAsDefaultProtocolClient(customScheme);
The custom scheme can be tested from the command line like this, depending whether you are running macOS or Windows:
open x-mycompany-myapp:/some/location
start x-mycompany-myapp:/some/location
A web client will just invoke a URL as in this Javascript code of mine;
The notification will be received within the main side of your app and on Windows will attempt to create a new instance of the app, in which case you need to detect this condition, process the notification then cancel the new app instance.
On MacOS it will be received within the open-url event, so you register it like this:
app.on('open-url', this._onOpenUrl);
Once the main side of the Electron app has the notification, it needs to get the URL information and forward it to the renderer process. You can use ipcMain events for this.
Finally the code for receiving the notification in running instances and starting the app from a deep link are different.
EXAMPLE APP
Since the code is a little tricky, here is some example code that may be useful, to give you something to compare against. If it helps you can also run the app by following the instructions in the blog post:
Code
Blog Post
My use case is around receiving OAuth responses after signing in from the system browser. Hopefully you can borrow some ideas from it related to deep linking though.
INFO.PLIST
My understand is that in a development environment (on macOS) deep links work when the app is running, but if you stop the app and attempt a deep link it will not start the app.
You can only resolve this for a packaged app, which requires an info.plist. In my code sample the info.plist is generated from build protocol entries in the package.json file.
My code sample is packaged in a basic way by the Electron Packager, so when I run npm run pack, the app is built to a dist folder. I can then run the packaged version of the app and it gets registered with the system - as can be seen in the Default Apps tool. See screenshots in the blog post.
SECRETS
Secrets for a desktop app should be stored using operating system secure storage. There are screenshots of credential storage in the blog post.
On Electron, have a look at the keytar component - and this wrapper class of mine. I am storing tokens (strings) so you should be able to adapt the code for your API keys.
I am trying to migrate an iOS application from an old Google Universal Analytics property to the new Google Analytics App + Web property.
How can I match the gtag event logging format (which our web peer application is using) to the Firebase iOS SDK to keep our reporting consistent across platforms?
For web, google explains using gtag to send these events. In their documentation, they show this example:
gtag('event', <action>, {
'event_category': <category>,
'event_label': <label>,
'value': <value>
});
But over in Firebase, google shows a logEvent method with a very different signature with some sample parameters.
Analytics.logEvent("share_image", parameters: [
"name": name as NSObject,
"full_text": text as NSObject
])
How am I supposed to square this? Should event_category and event_label be custom parameters on the mobile side? I am very confused as to how these can be so disparate but end up reporting to the same console.
There are no dedicated event category, action and label parameters in Firebase Analytics. Instead, you log an event by name and then optionally attach up to 25 additional parameters in order to capture additional context about the action that occurred.
I'm looking for recommendations for an iOS barcode scanner app. Specifically for iPad which will support a custom URL callback to enable the app to be launched from a web browser.
Additionally, it needs to support and a custom search URL which will send the user back to the website once the barcode has been decoded into a URN (SKU).
I have discovered ZBar which is an excellent app, unfortunately it doesn't support custom URL callback and it's designed for the iPhone.
Another app pic2shop PRO seems to tick these boxes, but it's relatively expensive at £10.49 and the setup will require somewhere in the region of 200 installs.
I did a similar project using the free version of pic2shop . The thing is that the free version can read only these types of barcodes : UPC-A, UPC-E, EAN-13, EAN-8 , according to the documentation of the app.
Pic2shop is a free barcode scanner app available for iOS® and Android®. It reads UPC-A, UPC-E, EAN-13, EAN-8 and QR codes. The app also display comparison shopping results for UPC and EAN.
From my personal experience, I can say that it scans and decodes the barcode very fast and very accurate.
In my project the app is launched from a webpage, it works for both android and ios. In order to get it working you have to invoke the pic2shop app from a url and then set your callback address. You will find the decoded barcode data as a value to a parameter in the callback url. To help you more, you can get those values using this javascript function found here.
For example:
<input type=button OnClick="scan();" value="Scan Barcode">
<script>
function scan(){
window.location="pic2shop://scan?callback=http://yourwebsiteurl.com/index.html?barcode=ean"
}
</script>
As soon as the item is successfully scanned it will redirect you to the callback url with the actual barcode number as a value to a parameter. For example http://yourwebsiteurl.com/index.html?barcode=5123548745123. I already told you how to get the value of a url parameter with javascript.
PDF417.mobi Pro barcode scanner app supports that use case.
Note: I'm a developer on that project.
Basically, the app can be launched from any other app, including a web application, when url in the form: pdf417://scan?type=PDF417,UPCA&callback=myscheme://myaction is launched.
The app then scans the barcode, in multiple formats, (PDF417 and UPCA in this example), until the result is obtained.
Then, the app opens the URL myscheme://myaction. In your case, this can be your web service, http://www.somemyscanner.com/service.
Specifically, it will open the URL using format: http://www.somemyscanner.com/service?data=[data]&type=[type].
You can then use those parameters to implement your desired functionalities.
I tried the PDF417 app and it is EXTREMELY expensive (for an app - $28) and does not work. I bought it anyway because I am trying to solve the same issue and I can tell you it is not the solution for general barcode scanning.
It might work with pdf417 barcodes, but those are few and far between and I haven't been able to get it to work. I definately does not support any standard barcode formats. It also has no settings panel (in settings) and the tap target in the app that should be settings just take you to the company web site.
I am still testing other apps but haven't found any app that does what you ask, Red Laser used to but it no longer has that functionality.
This is my first time create an ios application that required deep linking. I need to create a web service for my custom url scheme for ios in order to publish it online. Please give some pointer on regarding which web service i should use or is there an alternative way to create a deep linking for custom url scheme for iOS. Thanks.
You can do it yourself with any server platform - Rails, PHP, Dot.Net, etc.
Here is a very simple PHP snippet. Replace "myappname" with your app's URL scheme. The param/value query is optional - you can use any other text and parse it in your App Delegate's openUrl method.
if (strpos($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'], 'iPhone OS') !== FALSE) {
// redirect
header("location: myappname://?key=value");
exit();
}
Client use-cases:
iOS Safari, your app installed - will open your app.
iOS Safari, your app not installed - Safari will complain that it cannot open the link.
Another iOS app, your app installed - will switch to your app.
Another iOS app, your app not installed - same as Safari. However, if the other app is implementing UIApplication's canOpenURL: - it may gracefully take the user to the App Store, but it's up to the other app developer.
Any other device or browser - will continue to render the page, where you can add your html including AppStore links.
If you don't want to create the server code, you can use a tool I created for this purpose. You have it here:
http://www.uppurl.com/
It's mainly a short link tool that checks for user device and give him the right url based on his devices. With this tool you don't need to write any server code and it also takes care of different devices, operating systems and browsers.
Take care of Tal answer as latest versions of Chrome has changed the way to open app and now you need to provide a link in different format, they use something like "intent://..."
Specifically, I would like to share granular page content via triggering the iOS share sheet with in-page buttons.
In my webapp page, I have a table of downloadable PDFs. I would like to be able to add a column called "Share" into the table, so that a button could be tapped to share the URL to that document, without having to open the document itself and share from there.
In order to do this, I assume I would need to customise this triggered share sheet to share a different URL to the one that is showing in mobile safari's address bar.
Is this possible using javascript, or alternative URLs in a meta tag maybe? I don't expect URL scheme to be a solution, as it is concerned with sending data to another application.
Addendum 6/2020 It is possible since iOS 12.4, it works great.
It will be supported in Safari iOS V12.2. The beta of V12.2 already has it.
There's a good article by Maximiliano Firtman on a number of new features that will be possible in the new version.
Not currently on ios but a new w3c spec is on the way called web share api. Currently only available in chrome for android behind a origin trail.
https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2016/10/navigator-share
Yes, via the Web Share API
per the w3 docs:
shareButton.addEventListener("click", async () => {
try {
await navigator.share({ title: "Example Page", url: "" });
console.log("Data was shared successfully");
} catch (err) {
console.error("Share failed:", err.message);
}
});
Great article by Joe Medley on web.dev: Integrate with the OS sharing UI with the Web Share API