Uber universal link ending in endless loop - uber-api

I'm trying to use an Uber universal link on iOS. Following the affiliate program page documentation (here), I'm using a link like this: https://m.uber.com/ul/?client_id=<CLIENT_ID>.
When I use a dummy client id (or don't put one at all) and open it in Safari, the link prompts me to open the App Store.
When I put my actual client id, I end up in an infinite redirect loop between uber.com and launch1.co.
Should I do something to enable this feature for my client id?

EDIT: this is a bug, it will be fixed.

Related

App Store/Play Store redirection if App is not installed on ionic App

I have implemented deeplink for my ionic v1 application and also implemented universal link for same. I also checked so many links to implement App store redirection functionality.
Most of the link suggest to implement javascript code which first check device and based on ios/adnroid/window it will redirect to particular store but let say I will create that javascript code look like below
const iOS = !!navigator.platform && /iPad|iPhone|iPod/.test(navigator.platform);
if (iOS) {
window.location.href = "temp://itunes.apple.com/us/app/...";
}
but where should I put this file so when user click on deeplink it should redirect to particular this file and redirect to App Store/Play Store?
Let say I want to give my deeplink to some other server for which i don't have any access then what?
is there any other param or attribute we can set like fallback url by which when app is not installed it will automatically going to that particular link?
Any answer would be great help.
Thanks.
Usually it works that way:
You place a link on the website where you want to advertise your app. That link has a click tracking domain that points to your server. e.g. click.example.com/....
Upon clicking, if the app is installed, Universal Links would ensure that the app is opened. This is done by iOS (only if you configured Universal Links correctly, see https://developer.apple.com/ios/universal-links/). If the app is not installed, a redirect is done to your click tracking domain. This is where your Javascript logics should apply, so basically you need to reply to the request with a 302 redirect to an HTML file that contains the redirection logics (as in the example above). In that server response you can handle any fallback URL you want to use.
By the way, to make Universal Links work, anyway you had to host the AASA file, so you probably already created a server, so you can use it for the case where the app is not installed.

Embed API demo not working

I tried using this Google Analytics Embed API Demo, of course with my own ClientID (49803909):
Embed API Demo
However, instead of the graphic I should be getting, I only get a blank page. I did follow the instructions quite carefully. Does this work for others? Any ideas of what may be wrong?
PS: Here's the screenshot of where I am getting the id from. #DaImTo was right that just 49803909 wasn't it, but I also tried to full long string and even the service id below (the one with #), all to the same effect (a blank screen). So, is this the wrong screen then?
I think #DalmTo is correct. You're most likely using one of the many other Google Analytics IDs instead of using a valid Client ID (which is not Google Analytics-specific, it's a general ID used for accessing Google APIs), and you're probably getting errors logged to the JavaScript console that say something to that affect.
If you follow the steps in this Embed API Developer Guide, you'll see instructions on how to create a Client ID to use with the Embed API.

How to debug on Facebook Internal Browser (Mobile)?

I'm developing website with a lot of HTML5 and CSS3 features. I'm also using iframe to embed several content on my website. It works fine if I open it using Chrome/Firefox/Safari mobile browser. However, if I share on facebook (post/page) and I opened it up with Facebook application with Facebook Internal Browser, my website is messed up.
Is there any tools or way to debug on Facebook Browser? Thanks.
This is how you can do the debugging yourself. It's painful, but the only way I've come across so far.
tl;dr Get the Facebook App loading a page on your local server so you can iterate quickly. Then print debug statements directly to the page until you figure out what is going on.
Get a link to a page on your local server that you can access on your mobile device (test in mobile safari that it works). See this to find out your local IP address How do you access a website running on localhost from iPhone browser. It will look something like this
http://192.xxx.1.127:3000/facebook-test
Post that link on your Facebook page (you can make it private so your friends aren't all like WTF?)
Click the posted link in the Facebook mobile App and it will open up in Facebook's mobile browser
Since you don't have a console, you basically need to print debug statements directly to the page so it is visible. Put debug statements all over your code. If your problems are primarily related to CSS, then you can iteratively comment out stuff until you've found the issue(s) or print the relevant CSS attributes using JavaScript. Eg something like (using JQuery)
function debug(str){$('body').append("<br>"+str);}
Quite possibly the most painful part. The Facebook browser caches very aggressively. If you are making changes and nothing has happened, it's because the content is cached. You can sometimes resolve this by updating the URLs, eg /facebook-test-1, /facebook-test-2, or adding dummy parameters eg /facebook-test?dummy=1. But if the changes are in external css or js sheets it sometimes will still cache. To 100% clear the cache, delete the Facebook App from your mobile device and reinstall.
The internal browser the Facebook app uses is essentially a uiWebView. Paul Irish has made a simple iOS app that lets you load any URL into a uiWebView which you then can debug using Safari's Developer Tools.
https://github.com/paulirish/iOS-WebView-App
I found a way how to debug it easier. You will need to install the Ghostlab app (You have a 7-day free trial there, however it's totally worth paying for).
In Ghostlab, add the website address (or a localhost address) you want to debug and start the session.
Ghostlab will generate a link for access.
Copy that link and post it on Facebook (as a private post)
Open the link on mobile and that's it! Ghostlab will identify you once you open that link, and will allow you to debug the page.
For debugging, you will have all the same tools as in the Chrome devtools (how cool is that!). For example, you can tweak CSS and see the changes applied live.
If you want to debug a possible error, you can try to catch it and display it.
Put this at the very top of your code:
window.onerror = function (msg, url, lineNo, columnNo, error) {
var string = msg.toLowerCase();
var substring = "script error";
if (string.indexOf(substring) > -1){
alert('Script Error: See Browser Console for Detail');
} else {
var message = [
'Message: ' + msg,
'URL: ' + url,
'Line: ' + lineNo,
'Column: ' + columnNo,
'Error object: ' + JSON.stringify(error)
].join(' - ');
alert(message);
}
}
(Source: MDN)
This will catch and alert your errors.
Share a link on Facebook (privately), or send yourself a message on Facebook Messenger (easier). To break the cache, create a new URL every time, e.g. by appending a random string to the URL.
Follow the link and see if you can find any errors.
With help of ngrok create temporary http & https adress instead of your ordinary localhost:3000(or other port) and you could run your app on any devices. It is super easy to use.
and as it was written above all other useful information you should write somewhere inside div element (in case of React I recommend to put onClick on that div with force update or other function for getting info, sometimes it helps because JS in FB could be executed erlier than your information appears). Keep in mind that alerts are not reliable, sometimes they are blocked
bonus from ngrok that in console you will see which files was
requested and response code (it will replace lack of network tab)
and about iFrame.If you use it on other domain and you rely on cookies - you should know that facebook in-app browser blocks 3rd party cookies
test on Android and iOS separately because technicaly they use different browsers

Do Facebook Like Buttons require an App ID?

When going to the set up pages for all the Social Plugins, they now provide example code using an APP ID.
http://developers.facebook.com/docs/plugins/
Is an APP ID now required for the Like Button and other plugins? What happens if an APP ID is not included when using the plugins?
I've checked the Facebook developer blog and read about the Like Button Migration. I haven't been able to find a straight answer for this either there or in the FB Like Reference.
Notice:
This is an old dated information, the official facebook's behaviors are changed.
Simply, the answer is No, just look at the following official Facebook resource.
Notice: To do it without need to the app id, you have to visit the above page when you are signed out from Facebook. Look at the following screen shot.
As semsem said, the simple answer is "no it is not required"... there are ways to get around having an appId associated with the "like" button. Here's my experience working with this. I'm not a Facebook or Open Graph expert, so YMMV.
Why we avoided using the appId on the button:
We're providing an service where we have one website (the engine, as it were) that provides a service distributing online courses to students (customers). Instructors (also customers) who what to use our service to disseminate courses to students can brand the site how they wish, and map their domain to their section of our website that serves those course(s).
As a simplified example: we serve from http://courses.example.com/instructor_name, but we want students to access the content through http://www.instructors-domain.com/. Any courses would be sub-directories off the base URL.
Associating the "like" button with our Facebook App disallows any cross domain shenanigans. While there are valid reasons for doing so, it doesn't work for where we're at in our company and product evolution. So we needed to find a workaround.
We wanted to allow folks to "like" a course, have the "story" point to the appropriate places on the net, as well as get some customization (e.g. "NAME likes an online course on FBAppName"). We basically achieved this. We lost some functionality which we deemed acceptable at this point in our evolution.
The short of it
I used the iframe version of the Facebook "like" button as dictated by the appropriate Facebook developer's page (for the link see semesm's answer for the link, I got no rep). I took their code snippet and manually removed the appId query string in the iframe's src.
In the "liked" page itself (which was the same page that had the "like" button) I used the Open Graph meta tags including specifying the appId. (These tags were specified: fb:app_id, og:type, og:url, og:site_name, og:title, og:description, og:image.)
The og:type was our custom type of the form 'namespace:app_custom_object_name'.
A failed approach
My first attempt was to use what I understand as the preferred method, the "HTML5" tab in the "Get Code" section of the developer's "like-button" page. I tried their method stripping the appId from the appropriate places. This method proved ineffectual.
If the domain doesn't match that in the Facebook App, there will be no "like" button.
If the domain does match, the "like" button will appear. However, it takes 3 clicks to actually "like" something. The first click changes the "thumbs-up Like" icon to a normal anchor with one word that didn't make obvious sense (I forgot what the word was). The second click will brings up the login/authorization window for using our app. The third actually bring up the modern fancy "like" box where you can type in a comment. I didn't find a way around this behavior.
Note that when I specified the appId in this approach on the appropriate domain, it worked as one would expect (though inconsistent with our desired behavior).
I did not try the other two options in the "Get Code" section of the "like-button" page.
Informed speculation and rumor
In my research around this, my overall impression is that requiring an appId is the way of the future for Facebook. Who knows if the old way will be depreciated, probably never, though I didn't find anything in the docs talking about this "legacy" behavior. This makes sense to me with their newer offerings and the advanced tracking that becomes available with this method.
I've seen suggestions that the "likes" used in this manner are akin to second-class citizens... treated as inferior in some respects. In my own experimentation I found the behavior of the fully specified appId (in the "like" button itself) to be different and more accessible and predictable (in terms of Open Graph queries and visibility on my limited Facebook tests) than the partially specified appId. (Again, I've found no solid documentation on this, and did not endeavor to full grok the differences.)
May this info help someone else along. Good luck!
So, I just tried the sємsєм method, as comments say: Facebook want you to login to get the code, and if you have an app, you have to choose one.
But if you don't, it gives you a code without any app reference.
So when you get a code – no matter any app you choose –, you just need to remove the appId parameter in the .js URL (&appId=##############), and you got (for the latest HTML5 code, 6th line):
js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1";
The code for the div element does not change.
I simply use the URL code inside an iframe tag without an appID and it seams to work,
here is an example:
<iframe src="http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=<%=request.original_url%>&width&layout=button_count&action=like&show_faces=false&share=false&height=35&appId=" frameBorder="0" width="150" height="25">
</iframe>
According to Facebook's Social Plugins FAQ
Web: If you are using Social Plugins on the web, you do not need to create a Facebook app for integrating a Social Plugin.
iOS/Android: If you are using Social Plugins within a iOS or Android app, you need to create a Facebook app and tie it to your app identifier.
It seems that the official answer is that they are only required for iOS/Android.

redirect on facebook app install

Upon install of my app on a Facebook Page, I'd like to send the user to an URL with further instructions. I'm starting the installation with http://facebook.com/add.php?api_key=app_api_key&page=page_id, which installs but redirects the user to the Facebook Page itself. It seems like various forms of redirect were available at some point:
Post-authorize callback URL. I can no longer find that in App settings.
The next parameter for add.php. I can't seem to get this to work
I have seen some apps that do redirect upon install, so I believe this is possible. Maybe it's using an old Post-authorize setting that's no longer visible?
Any help or point would be greatly appreciated! I'm also not attached to using add.php, if there's a Facebook Connect method that does this I'd use that instead (I'm looking at profile.addtab though that doesn't seem to work either).
You can set the redirect URL in the app properties. You can no longer set it from the developer control panel in Facebook, but you can still set it using the REST api.
The list of app properties is here: http://developers.facebook.com/docs/appproperties/
To set the "post_authorize_redirect_url" you would use something like this:
https://api.facebook.com/method/admin.setAppProperties?
access_token=CURRENTTOKEN&
properties={'post_authorize_redirect_url':'http://mydomain.com/post_authorize_folder/'}
I am not completely clear on this, but I believe the url needs to point to a folder, terminated with "/" rather than a specific file.
The callback gets two parameters:
installed = 1 (true)
fb_page_id = the page id when your app was installed
First page that Canvas is point to should have
< script type='text/javascript'>top.location.href = 'REDIRECT-URL';< /script>
So when your app is opened it will automaticaly redirect to REDIRECT-URL
I'm not sure that you can avoid opening of application canvas page after installing application.