Using AppLinks in PhoneGap, Cordova and Iconic

AppLinks (http://applinks.org/) is an open source approach to unify linking between mobile apps and across platforms. The project was announced and released at Facebook's F8 conference 2014 in San Francisco (https://www.fbf8.com/).

Handling AppLinks in PhoneGap

Our first quick test method to handle the standard:

• Make a xHTTP request to the URL hosting the AppLinks Meta Tags
• Parse the response via JS DOMParser
• Read Meta Properties and try to open the app or go to the app store
• As Fallback call the original URL

Requirements

The approach is using the cordova/phonegap plugin "InAppBrowser" (https://github.com/apache/cordova-plugin-inappbrowser)

Example implementations

• /iconic-example/controller.js: This approach is based on the use of the Ionic Framework (http://ionicframework.com/), however it should be usable with any AngularJS phonegap app
• jquery/app.js: This approach is using jQuery (please check for code errors, not tested yet!)

#How to Handle Incoming Links

iOS

1. Add this to your *-Info.plist (replace URL_SCHEME by a nice scheme you want to have your app listen to, like mycoolapp):

<key>CFBundleURLTypes</key>
<array>
  <dict>
    <key>CFBundleURLSchemes</key>
    <array>
      <string>URL_SCHEME</string>
    </array>
  </dict>
</array>

Handle incoming links via the handleOpenURL() function:

function handleOpenURL(url) {
  setTimeout(function() {
    alert("url: " + url);
  }, 1);
}