I have run into several problems with iOS development through phonegap recently, and unusually people around here have been unable to discuss these issues and even together we have (for the first time I have ever seen) not had a single comment or answer for these topics...
See https://stackoverflow.com/questions/14707936/make-a-page-that-redirects-back-to-ios-phonegap-app and iOS broswer data -> Cache & Cookie for Phonegap App / Session?...
However, I have found "solutions" to get around these, but its by no means answers to the issues in question which are still outstanding... just simply doing it a completely different way.
However, despite loosing web-view in phonegap, in an attempt to get around https://stackoverflow.com/questions/14707936/make-a-page-that-redirects-back-to-ios-phonegap-app I now have some issue that are outstanding...
I need to be able to navigate back to my App from the web-system !!!
However, I have no idea how. I have read info on creating URL Schema, but I am not sure if this is even possible through build.phonegap at all... and it seems faily complicated. Does anybody know of a way for iOS safari to do one of two things
Either
Open the app that is running in the background
or
close the current browser tab and navigate back to the app in the background.
The closing tab idea would be good, but not essential
Look forward to everyone thoughts and opinions on this one...
Henry
You can create an url scheme for any application you make yourself.
See tutorial here
It's not as terribly complicated as one would think, and the required objective-c code is minimal.
Once you have done this, you can use your own url scheme to launch your phonegap application from safari with a hyperlink.
This would not close the tab (you could do this with javascript if you wanted to)
but does put safari in the background, and opens your phonegap app.
(whether it is already running in the background or not)
It is even possible to pass data to the app using your url scheme.
It is not currently possible using PhoneGap Build in 2.2 and previous. Potentially a feature top be released in newer versions of Cordova/Phonegap
Related
So, my team has been working on our Flutter app, trying to get a few of the deep links we created to open a website. And everything worked out fine...until we tried it on iOS devices. For iOS devices, the deep link behaves correctly only when typed out in the address bar, but when it's tapped on, be it in a TODO list, or through SMS messages, it takes you immediately to the installed app.
These behaviors, however, only occur for all URLs of the same host, for example:
https://foo.page.link/some-suffix
https://foo.page.link/baz/some-other-suffix
etc. you get the idea
Apparently, it's something to do with how iOS handle URL prefixes. This answer provides the best explanation and solutions I have found so far. However, these feel more like workarounds than solutions that would allow us to config our links like we did with Android. I'm asking here because the answer itself is almost two years old and there might already be simpler solutions out there.
These are the behaviors we defined for iOS and Android
I have a React Native app that pulls image urls from Amazon. I store the urls in a database, and reference them later as the source of my images.
After building up a good amount of entries in the database from several users, and releasing my app on Android, I decided to set my focus on iPhone. I'm now noticing that some images are not showing. So I go in and make sure that the urls are correct, and they are. Plus they're still working on the Android app just fine.
I then open Safari on my mac and plug the url into my browser. Same thing, it doesn't show up (Must be an Apple thing). An image such as this one...
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41OAg8ggg8L._AC_SY400_FMwebp_.jpg
Will not show up... but an image such as this... with a similar url will...
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51sEOLVrs5L._AC_SY400_ML2_.jpg
I'm essentially getting a view like this on my app...
I just know this has something to do with my lack of understanding on how images now work in iOS, I've found that much through Google. I just don't know what. Can someone please explain? Thanks in advance!
I can't seem to find an answer to this seemingly simple question. I have an app that i've built using the command line phonegap tools and when i start this app it opens up. i am using something called ios_sim (https://github.com/phonegap/ios-sim) which launches the app in the simulator and does not launch xCode (i don't quite understand why this is a feature, it seems like xCode has some useful tools)
Anyhow, my app is not functioning the same way that it does in the browser and i need to debug it. I have also already installed Charles to inspect the requests and i can verify that the correct data is coming from my API so my assumption is that there is some sort of javascript error in rendering the page (the page is partially rendered btw).
All i want to do is view the javascript errors. the same way that you would in the console if you were looking at a web page.
how do you do that?
You have to use Safari Remote Debugging with Web Inspector. See in the relating cordova docs how to do that!
I read that PhoneGap is approved by Apple as a framework for building native apps, but I'm not clear on how this does not constitute a "website wrapped as an app," something that Apple specifically doesn't like, as per their App Store guidelines. I'm assuming it is because the JS is contained in the application, rather than running on a remote server?
Any clarification on this issue would be most appreciated.
but I'm not clear on how this does not constitute a "website wrapped
as an app," something that Apple specifically doesn't like, as per
their App Store guidelines.
By this Apple means Apps that simply show a UIWebView that loads a remote website, so it basically just behaves like Mobile Safari, just without the controls. Also they wan't Apps to show at least a UI when the device is not connected to the internet, like in the Facebook App where you can still read already downloaded status updates, view photos etc. That's what a "I just wrap a remote website inside a UIWebView"-App can't do.
PhoneGap Apps have all the resources they need (HTML, CSS, JavaScript) on the device residing in the App's bundle, so using such an App would not depend on network availability and could at least show a UI that tells you to connect to the Internet in order to use the App, or they could display already loaded content (like Facebook, Twitter and so on).
I think that the signature of the binary tells Apple what framework built the application, and since all the supporting files (js included) are included in the project and therefore in the binary, it is a standalone application. That being said, I still think that doing things Natively is the best way to go. I am extremely comfortable with javascript and started out thinking Phonegap was the way to go for me. I did a couple of projects with it and then decided to take the plunge and learn Objective-C. That worked out so much better for me. No dependency on a third party framework and I wish that I had started that way.
Sometimes the easy way out just hurts ya in the end IMO.
I've been doing lots of work in getting a few web apps to work offline on iOS using the HTML5 manifest. I've ran across the typical problems everyone else has and fixed them and everything seems to be working fine—except in the case where I save the web app to the desktop on my iPhone 4.
If I do this and then enable airplane mode, I get the following alert when trying to access the app via the home screen: "your-app-name could not be opened because its not connected to the internet." Accessing the app via Safari browser works fine while offline.
If anyone knows if this is an error on my part, or even the slim possibility of a work around, do tell.
Even downloading the new Financial Times web app (very well done with extensive localStorage support) results in an error when accessing it offline from the home screen.
Technical specs: Running iPhone 4 with iOS 4.3.3 (but also saw the issue in 4.3.2)
After reading the comments (especially Rowan's) I ran more tests and found the answer:
No, Apple did not disable HTML5 offline capability for web apps saved to the home screen, it works - for the most part. There is a bug that will make it not work. It doesn't seem to have anything to do with your manifest setup (unless perhaps it downloaded a bad manifest or incomplete manifest at one point.) We don't know how widespread it is but the fix is to clear your Mobile Safari Cache.
Here's the steps:
Close the web app (make sure its not sticking around in the background).
Cleared Mobile Safari cache: Settings > Safari > Clear Cache
Reopened the app (for caching).
Close the web app again (make sure its not sticking around in the background).
Enabled "Airplane Mode": Settings > Airplane Mode
Reopened the app.
It should now work offline. If it doesn't then its probably a separate manifest issue in your app. Looks like a weird bug with the browser cache - or perhaps the cache was completely full? Who knows, but that's the answer. Thanks guys.
iOS seems to be very sensitive to load issues when offline.
I was getting your "could not be opened" error when offline on a page I was working on. The problem turned out to be that the page created an iframe pointing to a site that didn't have an AppCache. Removing those iframes fixed the issue.
In my case, I handled it using window.navigator.standalone which tells you whether you're running in an iOS homescreen app. The code looked like this:
if (!navigator.standalone) insertFrames();
add this to your html:
https://web.archive.org/web/20170201180939/https://jonathanstark.com/blog/debugging-html-5-offline-application-cache?filename=2009/09/27/debugging-html-5-offline-application-cache/
I found it massively useful - even though I've created my manifest file and compared it to other people's manifests this JavaScript debugging script gave me the clue I would have never found otherwise. I apparently had syntax error in my manifest ... long story short I had to remove everything and add the paths to each file/image one by one. The end result was the same however it worked... how weird!!! does whitespace / comments affect the syntax of the file?