I don't know a lot about how the iOS handles URLs, but it appears to be doing something strange on my phone...
We have a 'Like' button in our app, that when clicked on is supposed to open the Facebook application (or Safari, if Facebook is not installed). For some reason, when I click it on my phone, it opens the "Premier Inn" app. I have both the Facebook App and Premier Inn app installed on my phone, but not sure why Facebook isn't opening when the following code is executed:
NSURL *fanPageURL = [NSURL URLWithString:#"fb://page/BIG_NUMBER_HERE"];
if (![[UIApplication sharedApplication] openURL: fanPageURL]) { ... }
For obvious reasons, I've substituted the page number for BIG_NUMBER_HERE in the above code.
Can anyone explain why this might be going wrong? Could the Premier Inn app have "registered" itself as a handler of the fb:// urls somehow?
Regards,
Just as you suggest, it sounds like Premier Inn has registered as a handler for "fb". There's no central registry to stop applications from using the same URL scheme, it's really just down to good luck and reasonable namespace choices by developers.
Edit: I can't find a canonical source for this, but the handler application that's called is that which is most recently installed.
try change that page to profile.
Related
What I am looking to do is launch the facebook iOS App from my iOS App. I can do that with fb://URL but what I need to do is start it off in a facebook group page. It seems like all I can do is launch the app to the users news feed. I have no problem launching safari from my app direct to the group using the URL you normally would use (https://www.facebook.com/groups/group_name) but I would rather have people end up in the iOS app not safari.
I expect I might have have more luck using the facebook API inside my program but think its will be less maintenance in the long run if I let my users just use the official app for being a part of our group.
You are already aware of the existence of the fb:// url scheme, which is the way to go.
calling it goes like this :
NSURL *theURL = [NSURL URLWithString:#"fb://<insert function here>"];
[[UIApplication sharedApplication] openURL:theURL];
In the place of <insert function here>, you could use the following ways to open the facebook app straight to a group of your choice (note that you must use the group id rather than its name):
fb://group/(fbid)/members
fb://group/(initWithGroupId:)/members
fb://groups
The last one opens to the groups overview (which you probably do not want), only added that for completeness.
Akosma has an overview of a great deal of app url schemes for ios here
Did lots of searching, just came up with the "how to open a URL in Safari..."
Looking to find how to get/view/read what the current URL is when Safari is opened.
Edit:
My app opens a URL with Safari as follows:
[[UIApplication sharedApplication] openURL:[NSURL URLWithString:myURL]];
Supposidly, after some validation from website, the ending URL has some attached info.
So I'm trying to get that final URL from Safari.
This is not possible, you do not have access to any outside app. However how most of these authentication / validation techniques work is (like facebook / dropbox login etc.) is that they use some kind of callback back to the app.
You can register an specific url scheme to your app which can have parameters, this way you can get the info in the url the you need. The website will need to support callbacks though or you would need to be able to access the website to provide it yourself.
On how to work with URL schemes you can check out this tutorial:
http://mobile.tutsplus.com/tutorials/iphone/ios-sdk-working-with-url-schemes/
You cannot view this information, as the other posters have said. What you need to do is to use your own website to match the user of the app to the user on the website.
For example, you can send a random number to your website when the user is sent there buy.php?id=123445. Then request (periodically and/or with a button press) via the iPhone the result from your website ex. check.php?id=123445.
This also could be done with cookies and php sessions.
I'm pretty sure there must be a way to launch spotify iphone app from my own app. I've seen SMP app (share my playlist) doing something very similar when pushing playlist into spotify app.
I guess it should be by using something like:
[[UIApplication sharedApplication] openURL:[NSURL URLWithString:#"spotify://search:muse"]];
As you can see, I want to be able to make spotify search for a specific keyword. The problem is I don't really know the spotify url scheme, if there is such thing available.
I've been searching in the web, in spotify developer website, etc. but nothing comes up...
I have run into a similar need in an app. My solution was to create a client that hits the Spotify API to return either XML or JSON of the search. For instance, if you want Muse, you would hit the API with the following URL:
http://ws.spotify.com/search/1/artist?q=muse
From the XML or JSON, you'll be able to extract the link to the particular artist within their URL scheme:
spotify:artist:12Chz98pHFMPJEknJQMWvI
Chop off the spotify:artist: portion and append that onto a Spotify artist link:
http://open.spotify.com/artist/12Chz98pHFMPJEknJQMWvI
Then, using the Spotify URL scheme and UIApplication, you can open the Spotify app to that particular artist's page:
[[UIApplication sharedApplication] openURL:
[NSURL URLWithString:
#"spotify://http://open.spotify.com/artist/12Chz98pHFMPJEknJQMWvI"]];
Note, using URL schemes to access features of another app is generally undocumented and can be a fragile endeavor. If Spotify in the future decides to change anything about this, it will break this functionality without warning.
The quick fix I made was to remove the urlscheme that was added to the original uri.
so you'll be calling the uri directly.
which is 'spotify:artist:4gzpq5DPGxSnKTe4SA8HAU' or 'spotify:track:1dNIEtp7AY3oDAKCGg2XkH'
UIApplication.shared.openURL("spotify:artist:4gzpq5DPGxSnKTe4SA8HAU")
or
UIApplication.shared.openURL("spotify:track:1dNIEtp7AY3oDAKCGg2XkH")
this fix is for the crash when calling the old urlscheme from v6 and above.
I'm working on an app and I want to preserve messages from my application into the users Evernote account (if they select Evernote as a destination and if they have said app installed). Any idea how I can do this locally without the Web API? I can open Evernote by a call:
NSURL *everNoteUrl= [NSURL URLWithString:[NSString stringWithFormat:
#"evernote://"]];
[[UIApplication sharedApplication] openURL:everNoteUrl];
But this typically crashes as soon as the Evernote splash image appears.
I see that apps like Mobile RSS can open up Evernote and pass in the selected RSS message into Evernote (with the wifi disabled), so I should be able to do this locally, but can't figure out how.
Thanks.
See the URL scheme documentation of Evernote:
http://www.evernote.com/about/developer/api/evernote-api.htm#_Toc297053092
Seems like you can only view existing content via the url scheme. Why don't you write an email to Evernote and write the result in that post here.
Edit:
I wanted to recommend to you to write an email yourself as a developer and ask the Evernote team, if there are extended urlscheme possibilities, which are not communicated in their documentation. And if they answer your mail, you could share your new knowledge here with us. That was my idea.
An idea, how MobileRSS does it: perhaps they push new content via webservices to Evernote, then retrieve the new content-ID and than open Evernote? Or they have a special deal with Evernote, but I don't think so.
I have an app that will display web pages within a UIWebView. The pages it shows may contain links to other iPhone apps on the App Store.
In a normal browser on a desktop computer, clicking these App Store links would take me through a number of URL redirects and eventually end up opening iTunes and taking me to the page for that App.
Is there a way to ensure that when an App Store link is clicked inside my UIWebView that the App Store app on the iPhone will open and show the app?
What I've been seeing in my tests is that there are several types of links that can result in an App Store page, those being:
phobos links - phobos.apple.com/etc etc etc
itunes.com/app/appname links
referral / affiliate links
any that I don't know of
When I open any of these links in a desktop browser they will work and eventually open iTunes.
When I open any of these links from within the iPhone the UIWebView goes through a number of redirects and eventually one of two things will happen:
The redirects don't work properly and I end up with a page did fail to load method call
The redirects work and the iTunes app is opened, a search for the app name is done, and then I get a message from iTunes explaining it can't connect to the store.
The only time I've been able to get the App Store app to open is by using a direct iTunes link to the app without any referral or redirects.
Obviously for referral or affiliate links, I do not want to strip out the referral ID or affiliate ID. I shouldn't deprive them of a referral if it was their link that is clicked.
So any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks.
I found this Technical Q&A from Apple that answers my question:
The basic gist is this:
phobos.apple.com links constructed properly will redirect directly to the App Store app.
itunes.apple.com links must be converted into phobos links.
referral/affiliate links must be traversed using NSURLConnection and the final resulting URL will be a phobos link that can be used.
Thanks for your help guys.
On my tests, I only got phobos.apple.com links to automatically redirect to the AppStore (without any Safari redirect).
Addition to developer documentation, I think they should have the case when the redirectResponse is nil.
It took me some time to figure out what was wrong.
// Save the most recent URL in case multiple redirects occur
// "iTunesURL" is an NSURL property in your class declaration
- (NSURLRequest *)connection:(NSURLConnection *)connection willSendRequest:(NSURLRequest *)request redirectResponse:(NSURLResponse *)response {
if (response) {
self.iTunesURL = [response URL];
}
else {
self.iTunesURL = [request URL];
}
return request;
}
If you have not tested this yet on an actual device, I can tell you that the iPhone Simulator has problems with redirecting these links to the App Store (probably because the Simulator doesn't have it). Running you application on the device will yield different behaviors in this specific area, so make sure you're testing it there.
I've been trying to do the same thing. I wanted to place a link to the full version of my app in the free version. I just confirmed that the method used in the document works. ONLY on the actual device. Never trust the simulator!
Add the stuff in the document, and call it like this :
NSString *testLink = #"http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=284417350&mt=8";
self.iTunesLink = [NSURL URLWithString:testLink];
[self openReferralURL:iTunesLink];