How to upload file apple-app-site-association for universal linking in server for iOS app?

Question

What is the procedure to upload apple-app-site-association file in server. stg1.example.com is website where universal linking need to be done and file should be uploaded in the root path of it.How to make the service to upload for universal linking in iOS . How to upload the json formatted file in the server ?

Answer 1

The apple-app-site-association file needs to be accessible via HTTPS, without any redirects, at https://stg1.example.com/apple-app-site-association.

The file looks like this:

{
"applinks": {
    "apps": [ ],
    "details": [
        {
            "appID": "{app_prefix}.{app_identifier}",
            "paths": [ "/path/to/content", "/path/to/other/*", "NOT /path/to/exclude" ]
        },
        {
            "appID": "TeamID.BundleID2",
            "paths": [ "*" ]
        }
    ]
}
}

demo file in example

{
    "applinks": {
        "apps": [],
        "details": [
            {
                "appID": "M8HBL5W4VV.com.Universal-Links",
                "paths": [ "/iOS-Universal-Links/*"]
            }
        ]
    }
}

NOTE - Don’t append .json to the apple-app-site-association filename.

The keys are as follows:
apps: Should have an empty array as its value, and it must be present. This is how Apple wants it.
details: Is an array of dictionaries, one for each iOS app supported by the website. Each dictionary contains information about the app, the team and bundle IDs.

There are 3 ways to define paths:
Static: The entire supported path is hardcoded to identify a specific link, e.g. /static/terms
Wildcards: A * can be used to match dynamic paths, e.g. /books/* can matches the path to any author’s page. ? inside specific path components, e.g. books/1? can be used to match any books whose ID starts with 1.
Exclusions: Prepending a path with NOT excludes that path from being matched.

The order in which the paths are mentioned in the array is important. Earlier indices have higher priority. Once a path matches, the evaluation stops, and other paths ignored. Each path is case-sensitive.

Supporting Multiple Domains

Each domain supported in the app needs to make available its own apple-app-site-association file. If the content served by each domain is different, then the contents of the file will also change to support the respective paths. Otherwise, the same file can be used, but it needs to be accessible at every supported domain.

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Website Code

The website code can be found gh-pages branch on https://github.com/vineetchoudhary/iOS-Universal-Links/tree/gh-pages

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Signing the App-Site-Association File (For not HTTPS server's)

Note: You can skip this part if your server uses HTTPS to serve content and jump to Application Setup guide.

If your app targets iOS 9 and your server uses HTTPS to serve content, you don’t need to sign the file. If not (e.g. when supporting Handoff on iOS 8), it has to be signed using a SSL certificate from a recognized certificate authority.

Note: This is not the certificate provided by Apple to submit your app to the App Store. It should be provided by a third-party, and it’s recommended to use the same certificate you use for your HTTPS server (although it’s not required).

To sign the file, first create and save a simple .txt version of it. Next, in the terminal, run the following command:

cat <unsigned_file>.txt | openssl smime -sign -inkey example.com.key -signer example.com.pem -certfile intermediate.pem -noattr -nodetach -outform DER > apple-app-site-association

This will output the signed file in the current directory. The example.com.key, example.com.pem, and intermediate.pem are the files that would made available to you by your Certifying Authority.

Note: If the file is unsigned, it should have a Content-Type of application/json. Otherwise, it should be application/pkcs7-mime.

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Check out my full detailed answer here

How to support Universal Links in iOS App and setup server for it?