Redirect from a webpage to a page in the mobile phone app

Question

I wonder if the following redirection is possible:

Let's say that a smart phone user, who has installed my phone app on his phone, follows a weblink to a target url of my designation. I want to have the target url redirect the user back to the installed phone app and go to a particular page in the app. So the procedure is

Safari|QR code scan --> my url --> open my phone app --> load target page in app.

Can this redirection be implemented for iOS and Android? I will much appreciate any information on this.

Thanks!

Answer 1

For ios, in the info.plist you can define an url scheme. You can then handle the url within the app delegate. A good tutorial is located here

http://mobiledevelopertips.com/cocoa/launching-your-own-application-via-a-custom-url-scheme.html

On android you set it up as a data intent filter

<data android:host="string"
  android:mimeType="string"
  android:path="string"
  android:pathPattern="string"
  android:pathPrefix="string"
  android:port="string"
  android:scheme="string" />

http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/manifest/data-element.html

and it arrives as a data component in the intent that launches your app

<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="myhost" android:pathPrefix="/details" />
</intent-filter>

However, I'm not sure that all browsers on android actually test to see if other apps will accept the url scheme before loading it simply as the next page.