I want to launch opened app B externally from ionic app A using custom URL scheme.
Solutions Tried
Plugin In App Browser, is able to launch external app in the ionic app itself instead of launching the opened external app.
const target = '_system';
let url = 'abc123://abc.com/mobile/details/' + Id;
const options: InAppBrowserOptions = {
zoom: 'no',
location: 'no',
hidden: 'yes'
};
this.loadingProvider.dismiss();
this.inAppBrowserRef = this.inAppBrowser.create(url, target, options);
Plugin App Launcher. For android, it is able to launch external app but use package name instead of custom URL scheme
I use an anchor tag in my template, and set target="_blank". This is from an Ionic 5 app, but I've only tested in the full iOS build, I don't have an Android one yet. I'm also using Capacitor, but I don't think that changes the browser behavior.
<a [href]="website" target="_blank">{{ website }}</a>
The target="_blank" causes it to open the URL in the main os browser. The main browser should then handle your custom link.
If you have custom URL to open use
window.open('Your URL','_system');
in your code. This can be work in both platform Android and ios Perfectly.
I am using the Google Cloud print to in my web application to print the documents.
When i run the app in the web browser it works fine..
<script src="http://www.google.com/cloudprint/client/cpgadget.js">
</script>
<script>
window.onload = function () {
alert('Loaded the page');
var gadget = new cloudprint.Gadget();
alert('Loaded the gadget');
gadget.setPrintButton(
cloudprint.Gadget.createDefaultPrintButton("print_button_container"));
gadget.setPrintDocument("url", "Test Page",
"http://www.google.com/landing/cloudprint/testpage.pdf");
}
</script>
But when i run the app web app using a webView in android (UI Webview in iOS) .. the print doesn't work. It successfully loads the printer list ... I am able to select the printers and proceed to final print page. Afterwards when i click print , nothing happens.
Please share your thoughts on the same
I have web page where I have Button that either opens app (if it installed) or directs to App store if app isn't installed.
It all works if App is installed (I call into "MYAPP://"). However, if app is not installed Safari shows error message "Can not open URL" and that's it. Is there way to disable that message from JScript or is there another way to find out from JScript if app installed (instead of hitting app URL)?
To MODERATOR: I saw someone asked similar question and Moderator wrongly marked it as duplicate. Please understand that question was specifically about doing it from Browser.
Found somewhat suitable solution here
BTW if someone interested in how to do same thing for Android, here is code. We are using Dojo library:
dojo.io.iframe.send({
url: "yourApp://foo/bar",
load: function(resp) {
// nothing to do since it will automagically open App
},
error: function () {
window.location = "go to Android market";
}
});
At Branch we use a form of the code below--note that the iframe works on more browsers. Simply substitute in your app's URI and your App Store link. By the way, using the iframe silences the error if they don't have the app installed. It's great!
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<body>
<script type="text/javascript">
window.onload = function() {
// Deep link to your app goes here
document.getElementById("l").src = "my_app://";
setTimeout(function() {
// Link to the App Store should go here -- only fires if deep link fails
window.location = "https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/my.app/id123456789?ls=1&mt=8";
}, 500);
};
</script>
<iframe id="l" width="1" height="1" style="visibility:hidden"></iframe>
</body>
</html>
If others have better solutions to detect whether the URI scheme call actually failed, please post! I haven't seen one, and I've spent a ton of time looking. All existing solutions just rely on the user still being on the page and the setTimeout firing.
here is a code that works on iOs, even if the "Can not open URL" still show.
window.location = "yourApp://foo/bar";
clickedAt = +new Date;
setTimeout(function() {
if (+new Date - clickedAt < 2000) {
window.location = "go to Android market";
}
}, 500);
Thanks for the android solution.
I've combined a few things and used the following code to check if it's an iOS device before using the try/catch method from chazbot. Unfortunately, the device still throws a pop-up box to the user saying the address is invalid...anyone know if this is expected behavior for trying to open an invalid URL within a "try" block?
var i = 0,
iOS = false,
iDevice = ['iPad', 'iPhone', 'iPod'];
for ( ; i < iDevice.length ; i++ ) {
if( navigator.platform === iDevice[i] ){ iOS = true; break; }
}
try {
//run code that normally breaks the script or throws error
if (iOS) { window.location = "myApp://open";}
}
catch(e) {
//do nothing
}
There are a few things you can do to improve on other answers. Since iOS 9, a link can be opened in a UIWebView or in a SFSafariViewController. You might want to handle them differently.
The SFSafariViewController shares cookies across apps, and with the built in Safari. So in your app you can make a request through a SFSafariViewController that will set a cookie that says "my app was installed". For instance you open your website asking your server to set such cookie. Then anytime you get a request from a SFSafariViewController you can check for that cookie and redirect to MYAPP:// if you find it, or to the app store if you don't. No need to open a webpage and do a javascript redirection, you can do a 301 from your server. Apps like Messages or Safari share those cookies.
The UIWebView is very tricky since it is totally sandboxed and shared no cookies with anything else. So you'll have to fallback to what has been described in other answers:
window.onload = function() {
var iframe = document.createElement("iframe");
var uri = 'MYAPP://';
var interval = setInterval(function() {
// Link to the App Store should go here -- only fires if deep link fails
window.location = "https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/my.app/id123456789?ls=1&mt=8";
}, 500);
iframe.onload = function() {
clearInterval(interval);
iframe.parentNode.removeChild(iframe);
window.location.href = uri;
};
iframe.src = uri;
iframe.setAttribute("style", "display:none;");
document.body.appendChild(iframe);
};
I've found it annoying that this will prompt the user if they want to leave the current app (to go to your app) even when your app is not installed. (empirically that seems only true from a UIWebView, if you do that from the normal Safari for instance that wont happen) but that's all we got!
You can differentiate the UIWebView from the SFSafariViewController from your server since they have different user agent header: the SFSafariViewController contains Safari while the UIWebView doesn't. For instance:
Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 10_3 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/603.1.30 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/14E269
-> UIWebView
Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 10_3 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/603.1.30 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/10.0 Mobile/14E269 Safari/602.1
-> SFSafariViewController
Other considerations:
in the first approach, you might want to handle uninstalls: if the user uninstalls your app, you still have a cookie that says that the app is there but it's not, so you might end up with the "Can not open URL" message. I've handled it by removing the cookie after a few tries that didn't end up opening the app (which I know because at every app open I'm resetting this failed tries cookie)
In the second case, it's unclear if you're better off using a setInterval or setTimeout. The issue with the timeout is that if it triggers while a prompt is on, it will be ignored. For instance if you open the link from Messenger, the os will ask you "Leave Messenger? You're about to open another app" when the iframe tries to load your app. If you don't respond either way within the 500ms of the timeout, the redirection in the timeout will be ignored.
Finally even though the UIWebView is sandboxed, you can give it a cookie to identify it, pass it in your deeplink, and save this id as corresponding to device with your app in your server when your app opens. Next time, if you see such a cookie in the request coming from the UIWebView, you can check if it matches a known device with the app and redirect directly with a 301 as before.
I think you can still use the app url as a test. Try wrapping it in a try...catch block,
try {
//run code that normally breaks the script or throws error
}
catch(e) {
//do nothing
}
I Create a web application that when I click on button this open another application installed on iphone.
I call another application with this code:
window.launchAPP = function()
{
setTimeout(function()
{
window.location = 'http://www.app.com/'
}, 500);
window.location = 'app://';
};
This work fine if my webapp is called from safari. If I call webapp from my menu, after "add to home screen", other application is not called and I have this error message: "cannot open app. App could not be opened. the error was the url can't be shown:".
Where is my mistake???
Launching Your Own Application via a Custom URL Scheme
Like in android the best choice is registering your custom URL Scheme.
I'd like to have iOS to open URLs from my domain (e.g. http://martijnthe.nl) with my app whenever the app is installed on the phone, and with Mobile Safari in case it is not.
I read it is possible to create a unique protocol suffix for this and register it in the Info.plist, but Mobile Safari will give an error in case the app is not installed.
What would be a workaround?
One idea:
1) Use http:// URLs that open in any desktop browser and render the service through the browser
2) Check the User-Agent and in case it's Mobile Safari, open a myprotocol:// URL to (attempt) to open the iPhone app and have it open Mobile iTunes to the download of the app in case the attempt fails
Not sure if this will work... suggestions? Thanks!
I think the least intrusive way of doing this is as follows:
Check if the user-agent is that of an iPhone/iPod Touch
Check for an appInstalled cookie
If the cookie exists and is set to true, set window.location to your-uri:// (or do the redirect server side)
If the cookie doesn't exist, open a "Did you know Your Site Name has an iPhone application?" modal with a "Yep, I've already got it", "Nope, but I'd love to try it", and "Leave me alone" button.
The "Yep" button sets the cookie to true and redirects to your-uri://
The "Nope" button redirects to "http://itunes.com/apps/yourappname" which will open the App Store on the device
The "Leave me alone" button sets the cookie to false and closes the modal
The other option I've played with but found a little clunky was to do the following in Javascript:
setTimeout(function() {
window.location = "http://itunes.com/apps/yourappname";
}, 25);
// If "custom-uri://" is registered the app will launch immediately and your
// timer won't fire. If it's not set, you'll get an ugly "Cannot Open Page"
// dialogue prior to the App Store application launching
window.location = "custom-uri://";
It's quite possible to do this in JavaScript as long as your fallback is another applink. Building on Nathan's suggestion:
<html>
<head>
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width" />
</head>
<body>
<h2><a id="applink1" href="fb://profile/116201417">open facebook with fallback to appstore</a></h2>
<h2><a id="applink2" href="unknown://nowhere">open unknown with fallback to appstore</a></h2>
<p><i>Only works on iPhone!</i></p>
<script type="text/javascript">
// To avoid the "protocol not supported" alert, fail must open another app.
var appstorefail = "itms://itunes.apple.com/us/app/facebook/id284882215?mt=8&uo=6";
function applink(fail){
return function(){
var clickedAt = +new Date;
// During tests on 3g/3gs this timeout fires immediately if less than 500ms.
setTimeout(function(){
// To avoid failing on return to MobileSafari, ensure freshness!
if (+new Date - clickedAt < 2000){
window.location = fail;
}
}, 500);
};
}
document.getElementById("applink1").onclick = applink(appstorefail);
document.getElementById("applink2").onclick = applink(appstorefail);
</script>
</body>
</html>
Check out a live demo here.
For iOS 6 devices, there is an option: Promoting Apps with Smart App Banners
I found that the selected answer works for the browser apps but I was having issues with the code working in non browser apps that implement a UIWebView.
The problem for me was a user on the Twitter app would click a link that would take them to my site through a UIWebView in the Twitter app. Then when they clicked a button from my site Twitter tries to be fancy and only complete the window.location if the site is reachable. So what happens is a UIAlertView pops up saying are you sure you want to continue and then immediately redirects to the App Store without a second popup.
My solution involves iframes. This avoids the UIAlertView being presented allowing for a simple and elegant user experience.
jQuery
var redirect = function (location) {
$('body').append($('<iframe></iframe>').attr('src', location).css({
width: 1,
height: 1,
position: 'absolute',
top: 0,
left: 0
}));
};
setTimeout(function () {
redirect('http://itunes.apple.com/app/id');
}, 25);
redirect('custom-uri://');
Javascript
var redirect = function (location) {
var iframe = document.createElement('iframe');
iframe.setAttribute('src', location);
iframe.setAttribute('width', '1px');
iframe.setAttribute('height', '1px');
iframe.setAttribute('position', 'absolute');
iframe.setAttribute('top', '0');
iframe.setAttribute('left', '0');
document.documentElement.appendChild(iframe);
iframe.parentNode.removeChild(iframe);
iframe = null;
};
setTimeout(function () {
redirect('http://itunes.apple.com/app/id');
}, 25);
redirect('custom-uri://');
EDIT:
Add position absolute to the iframe so when inserted there isn't a random bit of whitespace at the bottom of the page.
Also it's important to note that I have not found a need for this approach with Android. Using window.location.href should work fine.
In iOS9 Apple finally introduced the possibility to register your app to handle certain http:// URLs: Universal Links.
A very rough explanation of how it works:
You declare interest in opening http:// URLs for certain domains (web urls) in your app.
On the server of the specified domains you have to indicate which URLs to open in which app that has declared interest in opening URLs from the server's domain.
The iOS URL loading service checks all attempts to open http:// URLs for a setup as explained above and opens the correct app automatically if installed; without going through Safari first...
This is the cleanest way to do deep linking on iOS, unfortunately it works only in iOS9 and newer...
BUILDING Again on Nathan and JB's Answer:
How To Launch App From url w/o Extra Click
If you prefer a solution that does not include the interim step of clicking a link, the following can be used. With this javascript, I was able to return a Httpresponse object from Django/Python that successfully launches an app if it is installed or alternatively launches the app store in the case of a time out. Note I also needed to adjust the timeout period from 500 to 100 in order for this to work on an iPhone 4S. Test and tweak to get it right for your situation.
<html>
<head>
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width" />
</head>
<body>
<script type="text/javascript">
// To avoid the "protocol not supported" alert, fail must open another app.
var appstorefail = "itms://itunes.apple.com/us/app/facebook/id284882215?mt=8&uo=6";
var loadedAt = +new Date;
setTimeout(
function(){
if (+new Date - loadedAt < 2000){
window.location = appstorefail;
}
}
,100);
function LaunchApp(){
window.open("unknown://nowhere","_self");
};
LaunchApp()
</script>
</body>
</html>
window.location = appurl;// fb://method/call..
!window.document.webkitHidden && setTimeout(function () {
setTimeout(function () {
window.location = weburl; // http://itunes.apple.com/..
}, 100);
}, 600);
document.webkitHidden is to detect if your app is already invoked and current safari tab to going to the background, this code is from www.baidu.com
If you add an iframe on your web page with the src set to custom scheme for your App, iOS will automatically redirect to that location in the App. If the app is not installed, nothing will happen. This allows you to deep link into the App if it is installed, or redirect to the App Store if it is not installed.
For example, if you have the twitter app installed, and navigate to a webpage containing the following markup, you would be immediately directed to the app.
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>iOS Automatic Deep Linking</title>
</head>
<body>
<iframe src="twitter://" width="0" height="0"></iframe>
<p>Website content.</p>
</body>
</html>
Here is a more thorough example that redirects to the App store if the App is not installed:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>iOS Automatic Deep Linking</title>
<script src='//code.jquery.com/jquery-1.11.2.min.js'></script>
<script src='//mobileesp.googlecode.com/svn/JavaScript/mdetect.js'></script>
<script>
(function ($, MobileEsp) {
// On document ready, redirect to the App on the App store.
$(function () {
if (typeof MobileEsp.DetectIos !== 'undefined' && MobileEsp.DetectIos()) {
// Add an iframe to twitter://, and then an iframe for the app store
// link. If the first fails to redirect to the Twitter app, the
// second will redirect to the app on the App Store. We use jQuery
// to add this after the document is fully loaded, so if the user
// comes back to the browser, they see the content they expect.
$('body').append('<iframe class="twitter-detect" src="twitter://" />')
.append('<iframe class="twitter-detect" src="itms-apps://itunes.com/apps/twitter" />');
}
});
})(jQuery, MobileEsp);
</script>
<style type="text/css">
.twitter-detect {
display: none;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<p>Website content.</p>
</body>
</html>
Heres a solution.
Setup a boolean sitiation using blur and focus
//see if our window is active
window.isActive = true;
$(window).focus(function() { this.isActive = true; });
$(window).blur(function() { this.isActive = false; });
Bind your link with a jquery click handler that calls something like this.
function startMyApp(){
document.location = 'fb://';
setTimeout( function(){
if (window.isActive) {
document.location = 'http://facebook.com';
}
}, 1000);
}
if the app opens, we'll lose focus on the window and the timer ends. otherwise we get nothing and we load the usual facebook url.
You can't, as far as I know, make the entire OS understand an http:+domain URL. You can only register new schemes (I use x-darkslide: in my app). If the app is installed, Mobile Safari will launch the app correctly.
However, you would have to handle the case where the app isn't installed with a "Still here? Click this link to download the app from iTunes." in your web page.
Check the User-Agent and in case it's
Mobile Safari, open a myprotocol://
URL to (attempt) to open the iPhone
app and have it open Mobile iTunes to
the download of the app in case the
attempt fails
This sounds a reasonable approach to me, but I don't think you'll be able to get it to open mobile itunes as a second resort. I think you'll have to pick one or the other - either redirect to your app or to itunes.
i.e. if you redirect to myprotocol://, and the app isn't on the phone, you won't get a second chance to redirect to itunes.
You could perhaps first redirect to an (iphone optimised) landing page and give the user the option to click through to your app, or to itunes to get the app if they don't have it? But, you'll be relying on the user to do the right thing there. (Edit: though you could set a cookie so that is a first-time thing only?)
In seeking to fix the problem of pop-up, I discovered that Apple had a way around this concern.
Indeed, when you click on this link, if you installed the application, it is rerouted to it; otherwise, you will be redirected to the webpage, without any pop-up.
It also possible to check tab activity by document.hidden property
Possible solution
document.location = 'app://deep-link';
setInterval( function(){
if (!document.hidden) {
document.location = 'https://app.store.link';
}
}, 1000);
But seems like this not works in Safari