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.
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.
@DeepLink("example://example.com/deepLink/{id}")
public class SampleActivity extends Activity {
@Override protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
Intent intent = getIntent();
if (intent.getBooleanExtra(DeepLink.IS_DEEP_LINK, false)) {
Bundle parameters = intent.getExtras();
String idString = parameters.getString("id");
// Do something with idString
}
}
}Sometimes you'll have an Activity that handles several kinds of deep links:
@DeepLink({"foo://example.com/deepLink/{id}", "foo://example.com/anotherDeepLink"})
public class MainActivity extends Activity {
@Override protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
Intent intent = getIntent();
if (intent.getBooleanExtra(DeepLink.IS_DEEP_LINK, false)) {
Bundle parameters = intent.getExtras();
String idString = parameters.getString("id");
// Do something with idString
}
}
}You can also annotate any public static method with @DeepLink. DeepLinkDispatch will call that
method to create the Intent and will use it when starting your Activity via that registered deep link:
@DeepLink("foo://example.com/methodDeepLink/{param1}")
public static Intent intentForDeepLinkMethod(Context context) {
return new Intent(context, MainActivity.class)
.setAction(ACTION_DEEP_LINK_METHOD);
}If you need access to the Intent extras, just add a Bundle parameter to your method, for example:
@DeepLink("foo://example.com/methodDeepLink/{param1}")
public static Intent intentForDeepLinkMethod(Context context, Bundle extras) {
Uri.Builder uri = Uri.parse(extras.getString(DeepLink.URI)).buildUpon();
return new Intent(context, MainActivity.class)
.setData(uri.appendQueryParameter("bar", "baz").build())
.setAction(ACTION_DEEP_LINK_METHOD);
}If you're using Kotlin, make sure you also annotate your method with @JvmStatic. companion objects will not work, so you can use an object declaration instead:
object DeeplinkIntents {
@JvmStatic
@DeepLink("https://example.com")
fun defaultIntent(context: Context, extras: Bundle): Intent {
return Intent(context, MyActivity::class.java)
}
}If you need to customize your Activity backstack, you can return a TaskStackBuilder instead of an Intent. DeepLinkDispatch will call that method to create the Intent from the TaskStackBuilder last Intent and use it when starting your Activity via that registered deep link:
@DeepLink("http://example.com/deepLink/{id}/{name}")
public static TaskStackBuilder intentForTaskStackBuilderMethods(Context context) {
Intent detailsIntent = new Intent(context, SecondActivity.class).setAction(ACTION_DEEP_LINK_COMPLEX);
Intent parentIntent = new Intent(context, MainActivity.class).setAction(ACTION_DEEP_LINK_COMPLEX);
TaskStackBuilder taskStackBuilder = TaskStackBuilder.create(context);
taskStackBuilder.addNextIntent(parentIntent);
taskStackBuilder.addNextIntent(detailsIntent);
return taskStackBuilder;
}Query parameters are parsed and passed along automatically, and are retrievable like any other parameter. For example, we could retrieve the query parameter passed along in the URI foo://example.com/deepLink?qp=123:
@DeepLink("foo://example.com/deepLink")
public class MainActivity extends Activity {
@Override protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
Intent intent = getIntent();
if (intent.getBooleanExtra(DeepLink.IS_DEEP_LINK, false)) {
Bundle parameters = intent.getExtras();
if (parameters != null && parameters.getString("qp") != null) {
String queryParameter = parameters.getString("qp");
// Do something with the query parameter...
}
}
}
}You can optionally register a BroadcastReceiver to be called on any incoming deep link into your
app. DeepLinkDispatch will use LocalBroadcastManager to broadcast an Intent with any success
or failure when deep linking. The intent will be populated with these extras:
DeepLinkHandler.EXTRA_URI: The URI of the deep link.DeepLinkHandler.EXTRA_SUCCESSFUL: Whether the deep link was fired successfully.DeepLinkHandler.EXTRA_ERROR_MESSAGE: If there was an error, the appropriate error message.
You can register a receiver to receive this intent. An example of such a use is below:
public class DeepLinkReceiver extends BroadcastReceiver {
private static final String TAG = "DeepLinkReceiver";
@Override public void onReceive(Context context, Intent intent) {
String deepLinkUri = intent.getStringExtra(DeepLinkHandler.EXTRA_URI);
if (intent.getBooleanExtra(DeepLinkHandler.EXTRA_SUCCESSFUL, false)) {
Log.i(TAG, "Success deep linking: " + deepLinkUri);
} else {
String errorMessage = intent.getStringExtra(DeepLinkHandler.EXTRA_ERROR_MESSAGE);
Log.e(TAG, "Error deep linking: " + deepLinkUri + " with error message +" + errorMessage);
}
}
}
public class YourApplication extends Application {
@Override public void onCreate() {
super.onCreate();
IntentFilter intentFilter = new IntentFilter(DeepLinkHandler.ACTION);
LocalBroadcastManager.getInstance(this).registerReceiver(new DeepLinkReceiver(), intentFilter);
}
}You can reduce the repetition in your deep links by creating custom annotations that provide common prefixes that are automatically applied to every class or method annotated with your custom annotation. A popular use case for this is with web versus app deep links:
// Prefix all app deep link URIs with "app://airbnb"
@DeepLinkSpec(prefix = { "app://airbnb" })
@Retention(RetentionPolicy.CLASS)
public @interface AppDeepLink {
String[] value();
}// Prefix all web deep links with "http://airbnb.com" and "https://airbnb.com"
@DeepLinkSpec(prefix = { "http://airbnb.com", "https://airbnb.com" })
@Retention(RetentionPolicy.CLASS)
public @interface WebDeepLink {
String[] value();
}// This activity is gonna handle the following deep links:
// "app://airbnb/view_users"
// "http://airbnb.com/users"
// "http://airbnb.com/user/{id}"
// "https://airbnb.com/users"
// "https://airbnb.com/user/{id}"
@AppDeepLink({ "/view_users" })
@WebDeepLink({ "/users", "/user/{id}" })
public class CustomPrefixesActivity extends AppCompatActivity {
//...
}Add to your project build.gradle file (Latest version is 
dependencies {
implementation 'com.airbnb:deeplinkdispatch:x.x.x'
annotationProcessor 'com.airbnb:deeplinkdispatch-processor:x.x.x'
}For Kotlin you should use kapt instead of annotationProcessor
Create your deep link module(s) (new on DeepLinkDispatch v3). For every class you annotate with @DeepLinkModule, DeepLinkDispatch will generate a "Registry" class, which contains a registry of all your @DeepLink annotations.
/** This will generate a AppDeepLinkModuleRegistry class */
@DeepLinkModule
public class AppDeepLinkModule {
}Optional: If your Android application contains multiple modules (eg. separated Android library projects), you'll want to add one @DeepLinkModule class for every module in your application, so that DeepLinkDispatch can collect all your annotations in one "Registry" class per module:
/** This will generate a LibraryDeepLinkModuleRegistry class */
@DeepLinkModule
public class LibraryDeepLinkModule {
}Create any Activity (eg. DeepLinkActivity) with the scheme you'd like to handle in your AndroidManifest.xml file (using foo as an example):
<activity
android:name="com.example.DeepLinkActivity"
android:theme="@android:style/Theme.NoDisplay">
<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="foo" />
</intent-filter>
</activity>Annotate your DeepLinkActivity with @DeepLinkHandler and provide it a list of @DeepLinkModule annotated class(es):
@DeepLinkHandler({ AppDeepLinkModule.class, LibraryDeepLinkModule.class })
public class DeepLinkActivity extends Activity {
@Override protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
// DeepLinkDelegate, LibraryDeepLinkModuleRegistry and AppDeepLinkModuleRegistry
// are generated at compile-time.
DeepLinkDelegate deepLinkDelegate =
new DeepLinkDelegate(new AppDeepLinkModuleRegistry(), new LibraryDeepLinkModuleRegistry());
// Delegate the deep link handling to DeepLinkDispatch.
// It will start the correct Activity based on the incoming Intent URI
deepLinkDelegate.dispatchFrom(this);
// Finish this Activity since the correct one has been just started
finish();
}
}You must update your build.gradle to opt into incremental annotation processing. When enabled, all custom deep link annotations must be registered in the build.gradle (comma separated), otherwise they will be silently ignored.
Examples of this configuration are as follows:
Standard
javaCompileOptions {
annotationProcessorOptions {
arguments = [
'deepLink.incremental': 'true',
'deepLink.customAnnotations': 'com.airbnb.AppDeepLink,com.airbnb.WebDeepLink'
]
}
}Kotlin kapt
kapt {
arguments {
arg("deepLink.incremental", "true")
arg("deepLink.customAnnotations", "com.airbnb.AppDeepLink,com.airbnb.WebDeepLink")
}
}Starting with v5 DeeplinkDispatch is designed to be very fast in resolving deep links even if there are a lot of them. To ensure we do not regress from this benchmark tests using androidx.benchmark were added.
It is testing the ScaleTestActivity in the sample-benchmarkable-library which has 2000 deep links. For those on a Pixel 2 running Android 10 we expect the following results:
Started running tests
Timed out waiting for process to appear on google-pixel_2.
benchmark: 11,467 ns DeeplinkBenchmarks.match1
benchmark: 160,382 ns DeeplinkBenchmarks.match500
benchmark: 10,906,459 ns DeeplinkBenchmarks.newRegistry
benchmark: 11,750 ns DeeplinkBenchmarks.match1000
benchmark: 105,898 ns DeeplinkBenchmarks.match1500
benchmark: 194,844 ns DeeplinkBenchmarks.match2000
benchmark: 155,989 ns DeeplinkBenchmarks.createResultDeeplink1
benchmark: 11,504 ns DeeplinkBenchmarks.parseDeeplinkUrl
Tests ran to completion.
As you can see it taes us about 11ms to create the registry with 2000 entries. A lookup can be done in sub 1ms usually and createResult, which includes the lookup for the match1 case plus actually calling the method that was annotated, can be done in 0.2ms.
The performance tests can be run from Android Studio or via gradle by running ./gradlew sample-benchmark:connectedCheck (with a device connected). The outoput can be found in sample-benchmark/build/outputs/connected_android_test_additional_output/.
- Starting with DeepLinkDispatch v3, you have to always provide your own
Activityclass and annotate it with@DeepLinkHandler. It's no longer automatically generated by the annotation processor. - Intent filters may only contain a single data element for a URI pattern. Create separate intent filters to capture additional URI patterns.
- Please refer to the sample app for an example of how to use the library.
Snapshots of the development version are available in
Sonatype's snapshots repository.
You can tell DeepLinkDispatch to generate text a document with all your deep link annotations, which you can use for further processing and/or reference.
In order to do that, add to your build.gradle file:
tasks.withType(JavaCompile) {
options.compilerArgs << "-AdeepLinkDoc.output=${buildDir}/doc/deeplinks.txt"
}If you are using Kotlin this is how you can enable it for kapt
kapt {
arguments {
arg("deepLinkDoc.output", "${buildDir}/doc/deeplinks.txt")
}
}The documentation will be generated in the following format:
* {DeepLink1}\n|#|\n[Description part of javadoc]\n|#|\n{ClassName}#[MethodName]\n|##|\n
* {DeepLink2}\n|#|\n[Description part of javadoc]\n|#|\n{ClassName}#[MethodName]\n|##|\n
You can also generate the output in a much more readable Markdown format by naming the output file *.md (e.g. deeplinks.md). Make sure that your Markdown viewer understands tables.
-keep @interface com.airbnb.deeplinkdispatch.DeepLink
-keepclasseswithmembers class * {
@com.airbnb.deeplinkdispatch.DeepLink <methods>;
}
Note: remember to include Proguard rules to keep Custom annotations you have used, for example by package:
-keep @interface your.package.path.deeplink.<annotation class name>
-keepclasseswithmembers class * {
@your.package.path.deeplink.<annotation class name> <methods>;
}
Use adb to launch deep links (in the terminal type: adb shell).
This fires a standard deep link. Source annotation @DeepLink("dld://example.com/deepLink")
am start -W -a android.intent.action.VIEW -d "dld://example.com/deepLink" com.airbnb.deeplinkdispatch.sample
This fires a deep link associated with a method, and also passes along a path parameter. Source annotation @DeepLink("dld://methodDeepLink/{param1}")
am start -W -a android.intent.action.VIEW -d "dld://methodDeepLink/abc123" com.airbnb.deeplinkdispatch.sample
You can include multiple path parameters (also you don't have to include the sample app's package name). Source annotation @DeepLink("http://example.com/deepLink/{id}/{name}")
am start -W -a android.intent.action.VIEW -d "http://example.com/deepLink/123abc/myname"
Note it is possible to call directly adb shell am ... however this seems to miss the URI sometimes so better to call from within shell.
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Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
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