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POSTINSTALL.md

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Welcome!

Thank you for using FlowLinks.

You can use the Dashboard to create and manage your flow links with ease.

Accessing the links

Before testing the extension, make sure the initialization is complete by checking the Runtime status tab.

The extension has automatically created a new website with Firebase Hosting.

Your website URL is: https://${param:PROJECT_ID}-${param:DOMAIN_POSTFIX}.web.app/.

This website will handle all created FlowLinks and it's domain name must be added to the application that you would like to open the links in.

Due to a quite lengthy domain name, it's advised to link a custom domain/subdomain to the new website and add that domain to the application.

Setting up the links

The extension has automatically created a new Firestore collection called _flowlinks_. Every document in that collection represents a flow link.

A sample path /welcome was created as a reference. Check it out here.

The setup is similar to Dynamic Links and must follow this structure:

{
	"path": (required, String)
	"og:title": (optional, String)
	"og:description": (optional, String)
    "og:image": (optional, String)
    "redirectToStore": (optional, Bool)
    "redirectUrl": (optional, String. Must start with "https://")
    "expires": (optional, Timestamp)
}

  • path: represents the URL path for your link (e.g. /referral). Must start with a backslash.

  • og:title: represents the meta-tag title of the link.

  • og:description: represents the meta-tag description of the link.

  • og:image: represents the meta-tag image of the link.

  • redirectToStore: decides whether to redirect the link to the AppStore/GooglePlay on available devices. Defaults to false.

  • redirectUrl: redirects the link to a custom URL when the app is not installed. redirectToStore must be set to 'false' for this to work. Must start with "https://"

  • expires: specifies the Timestamp after which the link will become inactive. Note: this will still make the link open the app.

Handling query parameters

Any path that was added to the _flowlinks_ collection can have custom query parameters when called. There is no need to specify them in the colleciton.

Handling multi-level paths

Flowlinks support multi-level paths (i.e. /archive/2004/articles/) out of the box!

Links logic

Your links are curerntly set up for an iOS app (${param:IOS_BUNDLE_ID}) and an Android app (${param:ANDROID_BUNDLE_ID}).

  1. If the link is opened on a platform that is not iOS/Android, it will do nothing or redirect the user is redirectUrl is set.

  2. If the link is opened on iOS/Android and the app is installed, it will open the app and trigger the according logic.

  3. If the link is opened on iOS/Android and the app is not installed:

    • If the redirectToStore is true, the according application store will open.

    • If the redirectToStore is false and redirectUrl is set up, it will redirect the user to that URL.

Handling links in the apps

This extension does not support the Firebase Dynamic Links libraries/packages. Therefore, it is recommended to use the native implementations for handling deep links - most of them are very easy to setup:

Shorten URLs: Coming Soon

The short URLs implementation is currently in progress and will be available later.

FAQs

  • How to make the links load faster? Links take a long time to load when opened for the first time in a while due to the Cloud Functions having to cold-start a new instance. In order to overcome this, you can set the Mininum Cloud Function Instances parameter to be greater than 1. This will allow the links to load significantly faster, but will increase Firebase costs.

  • I have a question, bug report, or a feature request. Feel free to open a new issue here.

Monitoring

As a best practice, you can monitor the activity of your installed extension, including checks on its health, usage, and logs.