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Universal links in iOS
Last day I was asked to integrate deep linking in one of the app that I made last year. It was in objective-C. I had to face so many issues doing this as there are no proper documentation and the one that is available over the internet are not straight forward. Here, I will share what I understood and how I did it.
Disclaimer: To make this article I had to read a lot of stuffs over the internet. Also, I had copied easy to understand examples and sentences from other article to make this article meaningful. 🤓 🤓 🤓
Apple docs link for universal links.
What Is A Deep Link?
A deep link is any link that directs a user past the home page of a website or app to content inside of it. e.g. linking directly to a product instead of the home page. For example the URL fb:// may open the Facebook app, but fb://profile/33138223345 opens Wikipedia’s profile in the Facebook app.
If you want to share a pair of shoes from the amazon.com with a friend, you can send a deep link that brings your friend directly to those shoes in the app. Without a deep link, your friend would have to find the amazon app on the App Store or Play Store, open the app to the homepage, locate the Search function, and then try to find the same pair of shoes you did.
Custom URI schemes were the original form of deep linking for mobile apps. They are like creating a “private internet” for your app, with links that look like myapp://path/to/content. The advantage of custom URI schemes is they are easy to set up and most apps already have one. The disadvantage is a user’s device only knows about this “private internet” if the corresponding app is already installed, and there is no graceful fallback option by default.
The workaround approach to deep linking with URI schemes involves using a traditional http:// link to launch a web browser. This link contains a JavaScript redirect to a custom URI scheme, which is executed by the web browser to launch the app. If the redirect attempt fails because the app is not installed, the JavaScript then takes the user to…
