What's New in Universal Links.md

What's New in Universal Links

@ WWDC 19

Overview

• URLs that represent your content both on the Web and in your app
• Available in your iOS, tvOS, and macOS apps
• Securely associated between your app and your website
• Recommended over custom URL schemes

Configuring Your Web Server

• Install a valid HTTPS certificate (HTTP is not secure and cannot be used to validate an association between app and website.)

• Add your apple-appp-site-association file (json file)

  • https://example.com/.well-known/apple-aapp-site-association
    

Configuring Your Web Server

• URLs and pattern-matching are ASCII

• Reduce download size when internationalizing

  • { "en", "fr", "mx", ... } -> "??"
    { "en_US", "fr_CA", "de_CH", ... } -> "??_??"
    

• iOS and macOS prioritize downloads from .com, .net, .org, and the user's ccTLD(s)

Configure Your App

<array>
	<string>applinks:www.example.com</string>
	<string>applinks:*.example.com</string>
	<string>appliinks:xn--fhqz97e.example.xn--fiqs8x</string><!--上海海.example.中国-->
</array>

• More specific subdomains have higher priority
• Internationalized domains must be encoded as Punycode

// Confguring Your app
func applicatioin(_ application: UIApplication, continue userActivity: NSUserActivity, reestorationHandler: @escaping ([UIUserActivityRestoring]?) -> Void) -> Bool {
  guard userActivity.activityType == NSUserActivityTypeBrowsingWeb,
  	let url = userActivity.webpageURL,
  	let components = URLComponents(url: url, resolvingAgainstBaseURL: true) else {
      return false
    }
  
  for queryItem in components.queryItems ?? [] {
    ...
  }
  
  return true
}

Configuring Your App

• Open in the browsing by default
• App must be on a local volume
• App store distribution recommended
• Developer ID-signed apps must be launched first

Opening Universal Links

UIApplication.shared.open(url, options: [.universalLinksOnly: true]) {
  ...
}

let configuration = NSWorkspace.OpenConfiguraation()
configuration.requiresUniversalLinks = true
NSWorkspace.shared.open(url, configuration: configuration) {
  ...
}

Best Practices

• Fail gracefully
• Use the Smart App Banner
• Feedback is appreciated!