Android deep linking into an app

Question

I am trying to create a link that can be sent via email which when opened on an android device with my app installed will automatically open the correct page in my app.

I have gotten this partially working in a few different ways but have found a few problems that I was wondering if anyone has solutions to.

Attempt 1: Using a custom scheme: myapp://someItem. This works but some email applications do not treat this as a link as it is not http. Is there a way to force applications to treat it as a valid link? gmail for example.

Attempt 2: Using a http link with a host: http://com.myapp/someItem. This works as well but my app ends up registered to handle all http links which is not ideal.

Attempt 3: Using a http link with host and port: http://com.myapp:2345/someItem. This is my current solution with the only drawback being that when the link is opened it still gives the option of opening the link in a browser. Is there a way to stop the browser attempting to open my links?

Does anyone have a way to make links that will be treated as links by all applications and also be ignored by the browser when opening them?

Answer 1

1 - Set Custom URL schemes like http://example.com

For example, the URL http://example.com/?id=95 , will open up the relevant FAQ and the URL http://example.com/?sectionid=8 (where sectionid is the publish id of any Section), will open up relevant section.

2 - Define in your AndroidManifest.xml your DeepLinkActivity (the one that will receive the URL data:

<activity android:name="com.example.shilpi.deeplinkingsample.DeepLinkActivity">
            <intent-filter>
                <action android:name="android.intent.action.VIEW" />
                <category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT" />
                <category android:name="android.intent.category.BROWSABLE" />
                <data android:scheme="http" android:host="example.com"/>
             </intent-filter>
        </activity>

3 - Override the onResume() method of your DeepLinkActivity class:

@Override
protected void onResume() {
    super.onResume();

    Intent in = getIntent();
    Uri data = in.getData();
    System.out.println("deeplinkingcallback   :- "+data);
}