I was wondering if anyone knows - if I have an iPhone app that is registered with a URL service (e.g. alocola://), which means another app can invoke it by calling its URL - is there any way to embed this URL in an HTML page, and catch the exception if the app is not installed on the user's iPhone?
Or in other words / more details:
I would like to write an app that conforms to some URL invocation (like alocola:// is doing), but would like this app to be launched from a web page read by mobile Safari. However, if the app is not installed on the user's iphone, I would like to be able to display a note saying "you must have the alocola app installed on your iPhone, please download it from the app store by clicking here". Is there a way (perhaps using javascript) to have Safari indicate that the URL cannot be invoked, and catch this in order to display an intelligent message?
Thanks :-)
Ariel
No, there's no way to detect this and display such a message. Instead, you should put text on the webpage saying that the using the link requires your app.
Related
I have an android app working this way:
User read QR-code with my specific URL
If the app installed it intercepts this URL and handles it somehow.
If app not installed standard browser opens this URL and it leads to Google play on app page.
When user install and run app first time it read browser's history and look for my URL.
If app found URL in browser's history then it handles this URL again.
Is it possible to implement this behavior on iPhone/iPad?
I suppose key features here are to read browser history and to intercept http URL's.
If this is impossible how would you implement this thing on iOS?
Thanks in advance for your help.
You can use custom application URLs in the form: myApp://... iOS will automatically launch the application if present. The logic for handling the 'not-installed' case has to be in the QR code scanning app. can be handled by the scanned website via a forwarding link using the iOS custom URL scheme (this might be useful for usage stats).
Additional info on implementing Custom URLs...
I'd like to be able to send invitation in an email to a specific "event" happening inside my iOS app. So I figured I'd need to use custom URL. That's fine.
But I'd also like to be able to handle the user that doesn't have the app installed yet, to be taken to a mobile Safari and to the webpage with installation instructions for the app.
What would be the best way to do it?
I could try the following:
In the email I send a link to a http://www.example.com/joinevent/?id=foo
User is taken to a Safari webpage that sends a redirect to mycustomscheme://joinevent/?id=foo
If the user doesn't have the app installed this redirection won't work and he stays in the Safari - I could then handle the displaying of installation instructions probably.
But this approach doesn't seem "natural" for me. Is there a better/more native way to do it?
Try http://rdrct.it
It is a web service that allows you to achieve exactly this functionality very easily.
Full disclosure - I created rdrct.it
Here's the basics:
Login to the site, create a project for your particular app. Choose a unique code (this could be the name of your app).
You'll then be provided with a URL in the form: http://rdrct.it/uniqueCode
Once you've done that, you need to register the app's ID in the app store, and also details about the custom URL scheme. Tick "Auto-redirect" - what it will then do is try to open the app, and if that fails, it will automatically send the user to the app store.
If the app is opened, then the querystring is also passed to the app, so in your example case, the device will have been served: mycustomscheme://joinevent/?id=foo
It also works across multiple device types, so if you have the app available for Blackberry, Android or Windows Phone, then it will also do the same for those depending on which device type the user is using.
Like I said, I created it, but it should solve your problem.
If you are using Distimo to track you app analytics, they provide a shortlink to your apps that can be used also used to track conversions. It shows a custom page depending on the device used to access. This is especially convenient if you have the same app published in the AppStore, Google Play, Amazon, etc.
I have a phonegap app that I use the Facebook plugin to implement single sign on. I registered am a native iPhone app since the app is not run in the browser. When I click on login I get an invalid URL error message. I suspect my problem is either I need to specify a URL which I have tried using channel in init but I get a URL not allowed with this configuration. The other problem may be that I need to register this application as a web app. However using phonegap the application does not have a url. I don't know what to do.
Any help is appreciated.
Thanks!
Did you look at the iOS URL scheme section of the Plugin's readme?
Question:
I am actively looking in the source code on Github's facebook-ios-sdk project myself but I was wondering if anyone already knows how to relaunch an app that sent an iPhone user to Safari, such that the user can come back after some work has been finished?
Example:
When using facebook to login, the original app is relaunched after the facebook login page has authenticated the user.
Motivation:
I would like to be able to do the same for youtube videos without having to completely lose the user. I don't want to use the standard webview approach because I don't want to provide extra space to first let the video load for the user and then have the user click the play button. I want to skip the play button and its associated click entirely! Instead I want the user to be able to click on just an everyday regular iPhone button and be shown the video with the navigation for coming back to the app via relaunch.
You need your app to register a "custom URL scheme". Then get the callback in the remote web service to return a URL with that scheme. iOS will then launch your application.
More (somewhat old) info available here.
A list of common custom URL schems on iOS can be found here.
Generally, as part of the OAuth login process, you supply a callback URL as one of the paramaters. What this does, is tell the remote server (YouTube), that on successful authentication, redirect the user to the supplied URL. If YouTube supports this (does it support OAuth?) then on successful user login within safari, youtube will tell users safari to redirect to the supplied url. If this url is a "custom URL scheme" it will cause your app to relaunch and you can handle the situation from there.
In my iPhone application I have a UIWebview that shows an html page. Inside that page there are links that should lead the user to the iTunes application and the application they tapped on. However, when the user taps on the link it errors out with 'too many redirects'. Looking at it with a packet sniffer I see it just keeps redirecting to the same http://phobos.apple.com/... URL. I even tried changing the link scheme to 'itms://' but that results in a 'Cannot show URL' error. I could solve this problem by trapping the URLRequest and sending openURL: to the UIApplication but the app has already been deployed and I don't want to patch it. I rather do it on the html/js/server side if possible. Anyone have any ideas?
For anyone still searching for this answer, I found that it seems to be a problem on the simulator which doesn't support itms:// URLs (because there's no App Store app). I didn't see the same issue on hardware, where the App Store app opens just fine (in my case this was when testing URLs from AdMob adverts, but it's probably the same for UIWebView).