How do you import or display an application inside another application?
It is like, it will be a part of the app where you can use it's functionalities. Maybe in full screen or not in full screen. My thoughts are these are web based and is being opened in a UIWebView to use the functionalities.
Extensions? It's more like "piggybacking".
Here's an example:
https://hub.united.com/en-us/news/web/pages/uber-on-the-united-app.aspx
I'll post an answer regrouping my answer and also #Popeye one that seems valid too.
There may be a few ways to do it, each ones of them may act differently.
The other app offers a public SDK/API/WebServices
As an example, I'll take FaceBook API, that allow you to login giving you a UIViewController (that you can customise), and allowing you to ask for some data through their WebServices (like who are the friends, etc.). You're still inside your app.
The other app offers you a private SDK/API/WebServices
Same as the other one, but it more like a parternship. You're still inside your app.
URL Schemes
The other app gives you a few way to interact with it. They check if the app is installed, and launch it with some parameters, or if not, they may redirect it to the app in the Store, their website, etc. More info about URL Schemes from Apple Doc. You have to check their documentaion to know how to interact with it.
Related
I need to open my particular UIViewController when the following link is clicked on the Safari browser:
http://my.sampledomain.com/en/customer/account/resetpassword/?id=24&token=8fbf662617d14c10f4a11f716c1b2285
When this link is clicked on the browser, I need to open my application on a particular screen and retrieve the data from this url. For example:
id = 24
token = 8fbf662617d14c10f4a11f716c1b2285
...and pass it to that particular UIViewController.
How can i do that?
What you are describing is called Deep Linking. It's a very common app feature to implement — most apps have it — and conceptually, it seems like an easy thing to build. However, it's complicated to get right, and there are a lot of edge cases.
You basically need to accomplish two things:
If the app is installed: open the app and route users to the correct content inside it.
If the app is NOT installed: forward users to the App Store so they can download it. Ideally, also route users to the correct content inside the app after downloading (this is known as 'deferred deep linking').
While not required, you'll also probably want to track all of this activity so you can see what is working.
If the app is installed
Your existing custom URI scheme fits into this category. However, Apple has decided that custom URI schemes are not a good technology, and deprecated them with iOS 9 in favor of Universal Links.
Apple is right about this. Custom URI schemes have a number of problems, but these are the biggest:
There is no fallback if the app isn't installed. In fact, you get an error.
They often aren't recognized as links the user can click.
To work around these, it used to be possible to use a regular http:// link, and then insert a redirect on the destination page to forward the user to your custom URI scheme, thereby opening the app. If that redirect failed, you could then redirect users to the App Store instead, seamlessly. This is the part Apple broke in iOS 9 to drive adoption of Universal Links.
Universal Links are a better user experience, because they are http:// links by default and avoid nasty errors. However, they are hard to set up and still don't work everywhere.
To ensure your users end up inside the app when they have it installed, you need to support both Universal Links and a custom URI scheme, and even then there are a lot of edge cases like Facebook and Twitter which require special handling.
If the app is NOT installed
In this case, the user will end up on your http:// fallback URL. At this point, you have two options:
Immediately forward the user directly to the App Store.
Send the user to your mobile website (and then use something like a smart banner to give them the option of going to the App Store).
Most large brands prefer the second option. Smaller apps often go with the first approach, especially if they don't have a website.
To forward the user to the App Store, you can use a Javascript redirect like this:
<script type="text/javascript">
window.onload = function() {
window.location = "https://itunes.apple.com/app/id1121012049";
};
</script>
Until recently, it was possible to use a HTTP redirect for better speed, but Apple changed some behavior in Safari with iOS 10.3, so this no longer works as well.
Deferred deep linking
Unfortunately there's no native way to accomplish this last piece on either iOS or Android. To make this work, you need 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.
Bottom line
Deep linking is very complicated. Most apps today don't attempt to set it up by building an in-house system. Free hosted deep link services like Branch.io (full disclosure: they're so awesome I work with them) and Firebase Dynamic Links can handle all of this for you, and ensure you are always up to date with the latest standards and edge cases.
See here for a video overview an employee at Branch made of everything you need to know about this.
I am stuck somewhere. My client wants me to develop an application that has a dedicated icon over other applications as well. For example – If I have an ecommerce application opened in my iPhone, there should be an icon over that application through which I can take screenshot and add the image to my application. I know this is possible in android, but is it possible in iOS as well, if yes then how?? Also refer the image attached for more clarification.
Share data between two applications
Historically, the iPhone has tried to prevent data sharing between apps. The idea was that if you couldn't get at another app's data, you couldn't do anything bad to that app.
In recent releases of IOS, they've loosened that up a bit. For example, the iOS programming guide now has a section on passing data between apps by having one app claim a certain URL prefix, and then having other apps reference that URL. So, perhaps you set your event app to answer "event://" URLs the same way that a webserver answers for "http://" URLs.
Have a peek under "Implementing Custom URL Schemes".
Is it possible to read the contents of another application installed on an iPhone? What about from an extension or keyboard?
I'm trying to come up with something that 'checks' other apps to see if they have any deep links (like Twitter's Twitter://timeline that takes users straight to the timeline in the Twitter app).
Is there any smart way to check a given app for deep links?
Is it even possible to peek at another app's contents from within my app? I suspect no.
If no, what about making a keyboard or extension of some sort that I can access from an app like Twitter and see its contents, such as a URL deep link?
You don't have much options, you may use -canOpenURL:, but, since iOS9, must include special credentails listing all the custom schemes you want to check.
You can't read other app's contents on a non-rooted device unless this app is sharing a keychain (so it can exchange data via the shared keychain). The same thing goes with extensions.
iOS has some high bars on security, so, don't expect much or even, anything.
Something you may want is IntentKit. Also there are ideas around the web about standard url query format like MobileDeepLinking.
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.
My app bounces the user out of the app into safari to do some web things (toying with using a webview but there are other concerns regarding layout, usage, re-launching the app, server errors, etc.). When they are done I would like a link on the final web page that lets them re-launch the app. I think this should be possible through a protocol implementation of some sort (such as href="myAppProtocol://relaunch") but I don't know how to go about implementing it properly.
[UPDATE] (can't answer my own question yet so editing here)
Stumbled across this just after posting (hours of looking and this is always how it comes together...) http://mobileorchard.com/apple-approved-iphone-inter-process-communication/
Using a URL type handler in your plist (as I suspected) you can declare that your app handles urls of that type (say "myAppProtocol"). iOS then launches your app and hands it the URL when it's touched in safari. What you do from there is up to you, I just need to launch so I don't take it any further, but you could grab the URL and parse it out for further passed information etc.
I guess you found the answer already, but have a look at the docs as well: Using URL Schemes to Communicate with Apps.