Facebook apprequest opening app from mobile website

Question

I have an iphone app that can successfully send Facebook apprequests to other FB users. When a FB user clicks the apprequest notification in the FB mobile iphone app it does the expected behavior. If the user already has the app installed, it immediately opens the app. If the app is not installed, it redirects the user to the app store.

However, if a FB users is viewing the mobile webpage (m.facebook.com) from their iphone and clicks the notification, it will always redirect them to the app store, regardless of if the app is installed or not installed. How can I get the behavior to be the same as the FB app (open the app if installed, open the app store if not installed)?

I've tried different Mobile Web URLs in the FB app settings, but this seems to have no effect.

Answer 1

As of 5/25/2012, this is a known bug and there is no workaround. The problem is that from the browser, they are unable to tell whether app is installed, so they always redirect to the app store. Confirmed by FB employee.

Answer 2

You can setup you mobile web url page so it does the smart timer appstore/app redirect. Described here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/1109200/383839 This works fine when you run it on m.facebook.com from mobile Safari. But the Facebook app browser fails on this because it tries to open the fb123456789:// scheme even when it doesn't exist - it cannot detect registered url schemes on the device due to ios restrictions. So you have the option to detect the Facebook browser and always show the appstore link instead of running the redirect javascript when the mobile web url is visited from the Facebook app.