This may sounds crazy but just curious to know how a deep link/ URL schema reaches to an app to open it up in the device. Searched for an article but all contain how to make it work technically which I completely experienced, but could not find one how the handshake works.
If anybody can share if known, much appreciated!
Thanks.
The best information I could find so far on the subject is Wikipedia:
Unlike the Web, where the underlying technology of HTTP and URLs allow
for deep linking by default, enabling deep linking on mobile apps
requires these apps be configured to properly handle a uniform
resource identifier (URI). Just like a URL is an address for a
website, a URI is the address for an app on a mobile device. Examples
of URIs that launch a mobile app:
twitter:// is the iOS URI to launch Twitter’s mobile app
YouTube:// is
the iOS URI to launch YouTube’s mobile app
The format of the URI used
to trigger or deep link an app is often different depending on the
mobile operating system. Android devices work through intents,
BlackBerry 10 devices works through BB10's invocation framework,
Firefox OS devices works through Web Activities, iOS devices works
through the openUrl application method, and Windows Phone 8 devices
works through the UriMapper class.
fb://profile/33138223345 is an example of a mobile deep link. The URI
contains all the information needed to launch directly into a
particular location within an app, in this case the profile with id
'33138223345', i.e. the Wikipedia page, within the Facebook app,
instead of simply launching the Facebook app fb://. eBay's apps
demonstrate the use of different schemes by platform.
eBay://launch?itm=360703170135 is the URI that deep links into eBay’s
iOS app while eBay://item/view?id=360703170135 links into eBay’s
Android app
Basically the URL matching starts at the OS level.
iOS will use the settings in your apps plist file for a whole bunch of other things outside the app. One of them being the deep linking.
You declare your URL scheme in the plist, and whenever the OS encounters a URL matching this scheme (usually when user taps a button or link), it will open your app and pass the URL information on. It's then your responsibility to determine what to do with this information.
Does it jump into a profile page? A particular product? That's all left up to you.
Related
I am planning to use app link from FBSDK to invite using my iOS app via email.
I know if my iOS app was installed on the device it will be opened when I select the link and handle invite token in URL.
But how about if my app was not installed?
After user install it from App Store can I handle invite token also?
Hope anyone used to work with this scenario can help me.
There are a lot of reasons why what you're trying to do won't come out the way you want it to. Let's dive in...
App Links don't work anymore
Facebook created App Links in 2014 as an open standard to solve the limitations of URI scheme deep links. App Links have two main components:
A set of meta tags to add to the web page destination of a standard http:// link. These tags specify the custom URI scheme location of corresponding content inside the native app, and the behavior that should occur if the app is not installed.
A routing engine for use inside apps that support opening links. This engine checks the destination URL for App Links tags before opening it, and then launches the corresponding app or executes the specified fallback behavior.
App Links were supposed to be an open-source standard to change the world, making app-to-app deep linking simple and universal. Unfortunately Facebook has decided they actually don't want that world (it's much better for them to keep users inside the Facebook app — see Instant Articles if you don't believe me), meaning the App Links standard is essentially dead. It's no longer supported on the iOS Facebook app, and Applinks.org isn't even a separate website now.
App Links were not designed to work with email (or essentially any app except Facebook)
Even if it were still supported by Facebook, the App Links standard has a critical flaw: it requires work by both the origin and destination apps. While the meta tags component saw wide adoption, the only major implementations of the routing engine were in the core Facebook and Messenger apps.
To function as you want, where deep linking can occur from links in emails, the routing engine component would need to be implemented in any email app where your link could possibly be clicked. This was never going to happen for apps like the default iOS Mail app from Apple, or the Gmail app, for example.
App Links had no meaningful support for deferred deep linking
Deferred Deep Linking (Deep Linking refers to using a link to open your app directly to a specific piece of content, and Deferred means that it works even if the app isn't installed first) requires a remote server to close the loop. You can build this yourself, but you really shouldn't for a lot of reasons, not the least of which being you have more important things to do. You'll notice that neither of the two App Links components included a remove server to retain link data through install, so deferred deep linking was never properly supported in the core App Links standard. Facebook ads make use of the partial support for deferred deep linking offered by the FBSDK in conjunction with App Links, but this only works when the link/ad is clicked within a Facebook app and the receiving app has the FBSDK integrated.
Deferred deep linking is tough anyway
Moving on from App Links, deferred deep linking is still complicated. URL schemes don't work, because they always fail with an error if the app isn't installed. Apple's newer Universal Links in iOS 9+ get closer in that they at least don't trigger an error if the app isn't installed, but you'd still have to handle redirecting the user from your website to the App Store. You can't pass context through to the app after install with Universal Links, so you wouldn't be able to send the user to the correct item, and they actually aren't supported in a lot of places.
Deep linking out of email on iOS is very hard
Almost all email links involve some sort of click tracking, which is always implemented as a link wrapping redirect. This isn't technically a problem if the user doesn't have your app installed, but if they do, Universal Links don't work with wrapped links. If you're building it yourself, you'll either need to completely disable click tracking in your emails, or accept that deep links won't work there.
Bottom Line
App Links were never the solution you needed. A free service like Branch.io (full disclosure: they're so awesome I work with them) or Firebase Dynamic Links is what you need. Both services support deferred deep linking, out of Facebook or almost any email app. Branch is more powerful and offers far more features, and works with major email senders to offer a solution for deep linked email (the only one on the market today).
I hear that universal links are more secure than the application URLs and want to exclusively use iOS Universal Links.
The Twitter Card documentation seems to only emphasize app links.
Can I use deep linking with Universal Links in Twitter Cards?
I'm not quite sure what you mean by 'secure', because both Universal Links and URI schemes result in the app launching directly in response to a user action on the local device. Perhaps you mean that Universal Links solve the potential issue where the URI scheme of a popular app is hijacked by unscrupulous characters?
In any case, Universal Links and Twitter Cards currently don't play nicely together. Universal Links are handled at the OS level, which means Twitter wouldn't be able to do any sort of tracking and attribution on those events. Instead, they use URI schemes to open the app and manually handle the fallback behavior for when the app isn't installed.
You can find a partial list of apps that currently support Universal Links here
Would like to know if expected behavior on deep linking using branch.io so when clicked on should check for app availability and prompt customer on iOS device to
Prompts to download app in App Store if not installed
Open in iOS app seamlessly if installed
If customer declines app download it will open in iOS mobile browser
My concern is this deep link behavior on a desktop experience. When a user clicks the same url I am being told this will take them to the iTunes app store resulting in a poor experience. Is this a correct statement? Is there any way to provide a better experience to the end user.
Thanks in advance!
I am being told if the same url is opened in Windows10 it will take me to the App
For example
1. Users opens email with deeplink url
2. what is expected behavior on mobile device with app installed that deep link
For iOS redirects, you'll have to set yourself up for Universal Linking per the documentation here:
https://dev.branch.io/getting-started/universal-app-links/guide/ios/
This is very important for redirect behavior on iOS 9 and later. Please note that not all 3rd party apps and browsers support Universal Linking functionality yet, so you should test on iOS from iMessage or Notes initially.
As for Desktop, you can set your Desktop redirect on the Link settings page - this will not take users to the App store/Play store on Desktop, but to the page you set. You can use the Branch hosted text-me-the-app page if you want to have this as your default for Branch redirects, or your site homepage, or any other page of your choosing. You can add Deeplink data that will be used for all redirects by adding key/value pairs in the SDK or manually when creating a marketing link from the Branch Dashboard. You can also set a $deeplink_path value that will be honored for a specific link, and you can further set a $desktop_url that will override defaults if you want a different redirect for a specific link.
There are many options and ways for you to configure how your redirects work - all of this is up to how you set your Link Settings on the Dashboard, and if you choose to override these defaults for any particular link. For example, you might have default redirects to the App store set for iOS and a desktop URL set to your main webpage on Link Settings. In this case, a link created without modifying these values will take the user to the App store on iOS (or the App if installed), and to the desktop URL specified in Link settings if clicked from Desktop. If, however, you want to override and set $desktop_url as something else for a given link, say, to a specific page on your webpage using the $desktop_url key, on iOS the redirects will be the same but on desktop you will be taken to the set $desktop_url. For any of these scenarios you can specify Deeplink Data to be passed through.
Assume I build a native Facebook App for the Mac or for iOS (just an example).
Now whenever the user opens an url http://facebook.com/.. I want my app to open rather than the browser. This is similar to opening google maps links prior to iOS 6 on iOS.
Unfortunately (like in the case with facebook) I do not own the service but I am only consuming its API so I can't forward to another URL from the actual website.
My question now is whether this is possible:
On the Mac with my native Mac App
On iOS (However, here I would be quite supprised if this was possible)
On iOS you can register a custom protocol which triggers if any other app (system, or not) tries to open that URL.
So in other words. Say your app registers the protocol 'myprotocol'. Then if you go to safari and type in the addressbar: myprotocol://sometext it will open your app, and your app can handle that URL.
This ALSO works from HTML loaded externally from Safari. So if your website is shown and on your website you link to myprotocol://sometext and someone clicks the link, then again your app will be opened.
Catching generic http requests system wide is unsupported on iOS
search for CustomURL / customProtocol for IOS apps. you will get your required answers. do let me know if you need a sample code.
I want to share a link from my app using other applications installed on my iPhone such as Gmail, Facebook, DropBox, WhatsApp etc. In android there is a straight way to do so, just fire an intent and it automatically shows the installed apps through which we can share whatever we want. Is there any such way in iPhone ?
Thanks!
On iOS , app is more separated from each other. The only way to pass data from one app to other is using the URL mechanism. As one example, an app register url scheme "open-me://",you invoked openURL with "open-me://my-link" then that app will launched. That app will define the detail of the URL so it could understand the content.Continue with the example we are using, the text you passed could be either "open-me://A?data=my-link" or "open-me://A?message=my-link". So there are no general solution for all apps.Typically third party app will provide a SDK to make these things easy.
If you don't mind using a kind of large third party library, ShareKit is a good choice. It supports quite some apps.
If you want to know more about this topic,for example sharing files between app. You could start from reading the class reference of UIDocumentInteractionController.This UI component will show a list of app installed on your device which support the URL scheme.