Linking to 3rd Party Android App from URL -- Specific Case with Blink for Home

rainieryoung · December 3, 2017, 2:49pm

This pops up from time to time – in most cases if the app’s developer has fully implemented the “Intent / DeepLink” featureset this is a non-issue and easy to accomplish (more info: https://developer.android.com/reference/android/content/Intent.html)

In the case of the Blink for Home App, this feature appears to only be partially implemented. Using a thirdparty DeepLink tester I was able to surface Scheme = immedia-blink

What’s interesting is that came from a function name “com.airbnb.deeplinkdispatch.DeepLinkActivity”

I found a github library with simliar names and some example DeepLink code:

github.com

airbnb/DeepLinkDispatch/blob/master/README.md

# DeepLinkDispatch

[![Build Status](https://travis-ci.org/airbnb/DeepLinkDispatch.svg)](https://travis-ci.org/airbnb/DeepLinkDispatch)

DeepLinkDispatch provides a declarative, annotation-based API to define application deep links.

You can register an `Activity` to handle specific deep links by annotating it with `@DeepLink` and a URI.
DeepLinkDispatch will parse the URI and dispatch the deep link to the appropriate `Activity`, along
with any parameters specified in the URI.

### Example

Here's an example where we register `SampleActivity` to pull out an ID from a deep link like
`example://example.com/deepLink/123`. We annotated with `@DeepLink` and specify there will be a
parameter that we'll identify with `id`.

```java
@DeepLink("foo://example.com/deepLink/{id}")
public class MainActivity extends Activity {
  @Override protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {

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I have yet to be able to create a URL that can launch the Blink app directly with only having the Scheme implemented and (apparently) no other Intent Filters. I suspect Blink will eventually get this implemented, but wanted to share what I was able to unearth thus far…

rainieryoung · December 3, 2017, 3:02pm

Well this is interesting. I inadvertently discovered that while certain links won’t launch the app directly, they will “app switch” to it, if it is already running.

Here’s a working URL to launch the blink app – keep in mind it has already be running:
intent://#Intent;scheme=immedia-blink;package=com.immediasemi.android.blink;end

There’s likely a better way, lots of trial and error without knowing what is and isn’t defined in the app.

rainieryoung · December 11, 2017, 1:35pm

Minor update, but after my post above I was able to strip down the URL further. This makes no material difference other than a shorter URL and clarifying what is or isn’t required to make the link work.

This still only works when the Blink App is already open, it will not invoke the app itself. For that, Blink needs to add additional “Intent” triggers to their app. (Which, if they do, could allow direct linking to specific pages such as the clips log…)

intent://#Intent;scheme=immedia-blink;end

Linking to 3rd Party Android App from URL -- Specific Case with Blink for Home

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