I'm trying to send an email with deep linking to my iOS app, using myapp:// format to open it up from email. It works (i.e. tapping on it opens the app) in any iOS mail client (Mail, Mailbox, etc.) but not in Gmail app (or even web), that strips it out leaving text only. Does anyone has a solution/alternative beside creating a web link that redirects then from browser to app?
Nope, unfortunately Gmail detects non-http/https protocols in links and strips the anchor () tag (so using data: or javascript: to perform a redirect is out too).
If/When Google implements Actions on Gmail for iOS/Android, those may work (https://developers.google.com/gmail/actions/actions/actions-overview), but as of now, they are not rendered on native mobile clients.
You can create a server with a regular endpoint that will redirect to the "special" myapp:// link.
If you are running Node + Express, here's an example of a middleware that does exactly that:
https://github.com/mderazon/node-deeplink
Related
When I use a service used for online authentication, I get an url to navigate to that will automatically open an app that is used for the passcode input.
The url is in this format:
bankid:///?autostarttoken=2a1b5e2c-c9fb-4402-1239-2a1619d655e9&redirect=null
The navigation to this kind of urls do only make sense on a mobile unit where a certain app is installed.
Nevertheless, desktop browsers (not everyone) also try to navigate to such an url, like it would ever be possible. That of course results in an error page.
Why do they do that?
Do I need to use a hidden form?
Will every mobile unit honor that?
The custom URL scheme is used to be able to start an application locally, in this case the BankID client which handles the 2FA.
This works nicely on both mobile and desktop, as long as the custom url scheme is registered. AFAIK for mobile, if the URL scheme is not registered locally, it will query the appstore and let the user install from there. The BankID is available for both iPhone and Android in the appstore. On Windows it also query the appstore, but the BankID client is not available as Windows App, so it has to be installed manually from https://install.bankid.com. On Mac I have no idea if it queries the app store, but I know it has to be installed manually from https://install.bankid.com
Android, iPhone, Windows Phone, Windows mobile, Windows XP and later, MacOSX all honors the custom URL scheme but it also need to be honored by the browser, which all the major browsers do.
Historically, before mobile, we used to start programs using the NSS plugin support in the browsers. NSS plugin support was removed by the browsers since it was easy to mis-use from a security point of view.
That's why the custom URL schemes are used.
As you can read about in the BankID relying party guidelines, there is a transition to use https://app.bankid.com links to start the client instead. Basically, that's just a custom url scheme similar to bankid:// but registers both protocol (https://) and host (app.bankid.com), which then starts the app. This has the added benefit that if a user who hasn't got the client installed and is not able to find the client via a appstore or similar, will get the web site available, which then can help the user to install the client.
As the idea of an applink is to let the user navigate to the website if the URL is not registered locally, don't hide the navigation.
I have read a lot of articles regarding universal links but still i need to be clear regarding few things.
I have to add universal links to http://www.domain.com but due to certain reasons i will not be able to make my website SSL certified or even put apple-app-site-association with https in root folder. So I thought of doing this in a different way, i will put apple-app-site-association file in the root of a subdomain, lets say https://www.app.domain.com/apple-app-site-association
Then i will open every universal link with that subdomain whenever universal link is available and redirect https://www.app.domain.com to http://www.domain.com if universal link is not available.
Questions in my mind :-
apple says - file needs to be accessible via HTTPS—without any redirects—at https:///apple-app-site-association.
In this line what does apple mean by without any redirects ?
when apple does not find any universal link related to a particular URL, will it itself redirects it to safari.
Is this a safe way to add universal links or is it necessary to have our main domain on https or at-least apple-app-site-association on https
This should work fine. To explicitly answer your questions:
'Without redirects' means when iOS requests https://www.app.domain.com/apple-app-site-association, it must find the file at that address. You can't have a redirect of any kind (Javascript, 301, 302, etc)
If a URL is not valid for Universal Links because you didn't cover it using the inclusion rules in the apple-app-site-association file, it will be opened using Safari. If the URL is on another domain without a valid apple-app-site-association file (e.g., http://www.domain.com/), then it will also be opened in Safari.
Yes, it's fine. Definitely a workaround, but not unsafe.
You should also investigate a hosted deep linking service like Branch.io (full disclosure: I'm on the Branch team) or Firebase Dynamic Links. These will give you all of the same benefits (plus a bunch more flexibility, to be honest) without any of the setup headaches.
We experienced ways where a 302 on iOS works.
In general I fully agree that Apple officially does not seem to support any redirect.
The following cases have been tested on an iPhone 6 running iOS 11.
These cases work :
Website in Chrome on iOS: User clicks on link A and a 302 redirects him to a Universal link B.
Website in Safari on iOS: User clicks on link A and a 302 redirects him to a Universal link B.
Gmail App on iOS: User clicks on link in email and Gmail opens external Chrome browser, which opens a Google link which redirects to link A which redirects via 302 to Universal Link B. (this case works only if Chrome is installed and in Gmail Settings the user explicitly changed the default browser to Chrome)
These cases DO NOT work:
Apple Mail: User clicks on link A in email and external Safari is opened. 302 happens and opens Universal link B. Result: App does not open
Gmail App: User clicks on link A in email and Gmail inAppBrowser (probably WKWebview?) is opened. Gmail redirects EVERY link from an email over a google server, as a second step link A is opened (dont know via 302 or other method) then 302 happens and opens Universal link B. Result: App does not open
Unfortunately you can see that in some cases it does NOT work. As these cases, Apple Mail and Gmail on iOS are very important for most of us here, I think this is a showstopper and you should not use it.
We tested with Adjust links and therefore in cases where the app does not open Adjust opens the AppStore to download the app.
For all Adjust interested: We tested by opening a link https://app.adjust.com/... which has a 302 on the respective Universal link https://XXXXXXX.adj.st/... on which our app listens.
I am an ios app developer. We have implemented a custom URL scheme 'my_app://section_name' or so where if the link is opened in the user's mobile browser, it will redirect the user to a specific section in the app.
We would like to be able to tweet these URLs and have users on their mobile device click on them to open up the app, however it just can click once
(when you click close , maybe you click wrong then you want to click it second but it does not work )
I hope this isn't too silly of a question. Thanks
Make sure to check the tweet body after it have been posted.
This may be due of an URL shortener, especially if the tweet is posted from the iOS 5 Twitter framework.
I'm having a similar issue with url schemes. We can include them in emails and text messages, and they highlight and work properly.
Unfortunately, when we do the same with a tweet, the iOS Twitter client fails to recognise the special URL scheme and so the user cannot tap on it to open our app.
Pretty big oversight, methinks. Anyone else had any joy including special URL scheme links in tweets?
A solution that you should consider involves not sharing the URI scheme directly, but rather creating a page on your web server to handle this. In fact, if you want to be able to share full URI schemes with paths, you're better off building a web server to dynamically generate a page with a URI scheme redirect.
This is a over-simplified representation of what we built at Branch. This includes some code to get you started though the web server will require a bit of setup not described here.
instead of testapp://some.data.here, you'll link to http://yoursite.com/hosted-redirect/some.data.here.
your server should listen at the route /hosted-redirect, grab some.data.here and build the following page (body here):
(source: derrrick.com)
So your server will have to generate and respond with this page, filling in some.data.here, anytime http://yoursite.com/hosted-redirect/some.data.here is requested.
A lightweight node app could do this with a single file.
I am in the process of creating an iOS app with Phonegap and jQuery, however, I am running into issues trying to allow both iFrames (to load normally) and external URLs (to open in Safari). I decided to choose the path of using iframes as I was not able to send POST and open the resulting page in Safari (i was trying to create a mobile friendly login window that opens to the full site in safari).
I recently updated to v1.5 hoping to resolve the issue, but it still occurs.
I have tried the trick "[url scheme] isEqualToString:#"http"...." however this forces any page in the iframe to load in safari.
So, I would like either to have external URLs and iframes to behave just like it does in a Webapp (add to homescreen button on iOS) or be able to send POST to Safari?
Has anyone got ideas? :)
Thanks!
You could change tactic slightly and login fully using your app, but then create an authentication token which would be passed via a standard link to be opened in safari.
You could generate the token new each time. Tokens are a valid system for access.
I added to my iOS application option to detect and response to custom URL schemes to launch application ( http://iosdevelopertips.com/cocoa/launching-your-own-application-via-a-custom-url-scheme.html ).
Link is working perfectly on different sites (using href), but I'm having problem with Facebook. If I'm trying to post link (using Graph API) which looks like:
myapp://blabla
Facebook return error:
The url you supplied is invalid
And for feed with link return
link URL is not properly formatted.
I can't just post url as a message because it's not being detected as a URL and appear like text only.
Is there any way to post to Facebook wall with custom links?
Edit:
I have an idea, but I don't know if it gonna work. Putting
myapp://blabla directly into address field in mobile browser is launching application so probably accessing an webpage (like http://www.mywebpage/myapp) with only redirection to
myapp://blabla gonna work too, but is Facebook gonna accept that link?
I think your suggestion in the edit is the correct method, and should work. However applications like spotify seem to use an intersticial page which fires the "app link" with javascript, the advantage to this approach is that you can use that page to "sell" the app to users who don't have it and also provide lovely open graph tags for people who want to share it.