Send user to page on mobile app when clicking email link - ionic-framework

Question

I have just started an Ionic 2 mobile app.
I am setting up an update password process where a user can enter their email, click a "send password update email" button which then emails them a link. They can click that link which takes them to a page where they can update their password.
How do I send them a link in their email that when clicked on will open up the app and take them to a specific page?
Even more complicated is that I have a web app also. So if I'm sending them an email, should I show update password on website and update password on mobile app links? Or should I just add a link to the website?

Answer 1

In order to open the mobile app from a link, you need to integrate a cordova plugin called cordova-plugin-customurlscheme. With this plugin you can register a custom url "protocol" that is unique to your app (eg. myAwesomeApp://register?token=123). After installing the plugin with your custom url, clicking on any link starting with myAwesomeApp:// will open your app and also trigger a function hooked on the window object called handleOpenUrl which accepts the url as param. Inside there you can do your routing, depending on the url param.
let self = this;
(<any>window).handleOpenURL = function handleOpenURL(url) {
setTimeout(() => {
if (url && url.indexOf('\register') !== -1) {
let token = URLHelper.getParameterByName(url, 'token');
self.setAsRoot(ConfirmEmailPage, { activationToken: token });
}
}, 0);
};
As for dealing with your web app, what you could do is the following (this is what I am currently doing):
Host online a page (say www.myAwesomeWebsite.com/register?token=123) that checks to see if the user is coming from a mobile device (iOS or Android more specifically). If so on page load redirect them to your myAwesomeApp://register?token=123 link and have a button saying install app from app store with a link to your mobile app. If the user has the app, the app will be opened by the redirect, if they don't they will get an alert saying link cannot be found or sth and after clicking ok they will see the install App from app store button. If the user is not coming from a mobile device, just redirect them to your web app myAwesomeWebApp.com/register?token=123.
Another option is to use a third party service for deep linking like branch
Hope that helps.
EDIT: Since I posted this answer Ionic team has come with their own plugin for deep linking that kind of simplifies some of the hooking up inside your app. Their detailed blog post can be found here. In essence you install their plugin:
cordova plugin add ionic-plugin-deeplinks --variable URL_SCHEME=ionichats --variable DEEPLINK_SCHEME=https --variable DEEPLINK_HOST=ionic-hats.com
and then hook to it like so:
import {Component, ViewChild} from '#angular/core';
import {Platform, Nav, ionicBootstrap} from 'ionic-angular';
import {Deeplinks} from 'ionic-native';
import {AboutPage} from './pages/about/about';
import {HatDetailPage} from './pages/hat/hat';
#Component({
template: '<ion-nav [root]="rootPage"></ion-nav>',
})
class MyApp {
#ViewChild(Nav) nav:Nav;
constructor(private _platform: Platform) {}
ngAfterViewInit() {
this._platform.ready().then(() => {
Deeplinks.routeWithNavController(this.nav, {
'/about-us': AboutPage,
'/hats/:hatId': HatDetailPage
});
});
}
});
ionicBootstrap(MyApp);
Note that although this improves the plugin interfacing a bit, it does not change the fact that you have to use some other mechanism to handle deep links in conjunction with your web app.