DeepLink Kit

Overview

DeepLink Kit is a splendid route-matching, block-based way to handle your deep links. Rather than decide how to format your URLs, parse them, pass data, and navigate to specific content or perform actions, this library and a few lines of code will get you on your way.

Full Documentation

Guide to add Universal Links to your app

Check it out

Try the DeepLinkKit sample project by running the following command:

pod try "DeepLinkKit"

Installation

CocoaPods

DeepLinkKit is available through CocoaPods. To install the library, simply add the following line to your Podfile:

pod "DeepLinkKit"

Carthage

To install via Carthage, add the following line to your Cartfile:

github "button/DeepLinkKit"

Other

If you don't use CocoaPods or Carthage, you can include all of the source files from the DeepLinkKit directory in your project.

Usage

Add deep link support to your app in 5 minutes or less following these simple steps.

Note: As of 1.0.0, all imports should be updated to import <DeepLinkKit/DeepLinkKit.h>.

1. Make sure you have a URL scheme registered for your app in your Info.plist

2. Import DeepLinkKit

#import <DeepLinkKit/DeepLinkKit.h>

3. Create an instance of DPLDeepLinkRouter in your app delegate

- (BOOL)application:(UIApplication *)application
        didFinishLaunchingWithOptions:(NSDictionary *)launchOptions {

  self.router = [[DPLDeepLinkRouter alloc] init];

  return YES;
}

4. Register a route handler

Objective-C

self.router[@"/log/:message"] = ^(DPLDeepLink *link) {
  NSLog(@"%@", link.routeParameters[@"message"]);
};

Swift

self.router.register("/log/:message") { link in
    if let link = link {
        print("\(link.routeParameters["message"])")
    }
}

5. Pass incoming URLs to the router

- (BOOL)application:(UIApplication *)application
            openURL:(NSURL *)url
  sourceApplication:(NSString *)sourceApplication
         annotation:(id)annotation {

  return [self.router handleURL:url withCompletion:NULL];
}

6. Passing NSUserActivity objects to the router (optional)

Note: If your application supports Apple's new universal links, implement the following in your app delegate:

- (BOOL)application:(UIApplication *)application
        continueUserActivity:(NSUserActivity *)userActivity
          restorationHandler:(void (^)(NSArray *))restorationHandler {

    return [self.router handleUserActivity:userActivity withCompletion:NULL];
}

Learn more about the DeepLinkKit by reading our Integration Guide.

Route Registration Examples

URLs coming into your app will be in a similar format to the following: <scheme>://<host>/<path-component>/<path-component>

When registering routes, it's important to note that the first forward slash in your registered route determines the start of the path to be matched. A route component before the first forward slash will be considered to be the host.

Say you have an incoming URL of twitter://timeline

// Matches the URL.
router[@"timeline"] = ^{ … }

// Does not match the URL.
router[@"/timeline"] = ^{ … }

In another example, a URL of twitter://dpl.com/timeline

// Matches the URL.
router[@"/timeline"] = ^{ … }

// Does not match the URL.
router[@"timeline"] = ^{ … }

You can also be scheme specific. If you support multiple URL schemes in your app, you can register routes specific to those schemes as follows:

An incoming URL of scheme-one://timeline

// Matches the URL.
router[@"scheme-one://timeline"] = ^{ … }

// Does not match the URL.
router[@"scheme-two://timeline"] = ^{ … }

Regex Route Matching

You can use regex in your route patterns as well to give you maximum flexibility.

Match any url

The following will match all incoming urls

router[@".*"] ^(DPLDeepLink *link){
  // This will match all incoming links
}

Note: Routes are matched in the order they're registered so registering this route first will prevent all other more specific routes from matching.

Match any url with a given scheme

The following will match all incoming links with the scheme, myscheme://

router[@"myscheme://.*"] ^(DPLDeepLink *link){
  // matches all urls with a scheme of `myscheme://`
}

You can name your regex groups too

The following will match any url with a host of trycaviar.com and hand you :path in the route params.

// Given the url ‘https://trycaviar.com/manhattan/nicoletta-297`
router[@"trycaviar.com/:path(.*)"] ^(DPLDeepLink *link){
  // `link[@"path"]` => @"manhattan/nicoletta-297"
}

Match multiple path components

In this example, you'll get :city and :restaurant in the route params.

// Given the url ‘https://trycaviar.com/manhattan/nicoletta-297`
router[@"trycaviar.com/:city([a-zA-Z]+)/:restaurant(.*)"] ^(DPLDeepLink *link){
  // `link[@"city"]` => @"manhattan"
  // `link[@"restaurant"]` => @"nicoletta-297"
}

If the restaurant ids are numbers, you could limit your matches as follows.

// Given the url ‘https://trycaviar.com/manhattan/297`
router[@"trycaviar.com/:city([a-zA-Z]+)/:restaurant([0-9])"] ^(DPLDeepLink *link){
  // `link[@"city"]` => @"manhattan"
  // `link[@"restaurant"]` => @"297"
}

Name some groups and not others

// Lets say the url is ‘https://trycaviar.com/manhattan/pizza/nicoletta-297`
router[@"trycaviar.com/:city([a-zA-Z]+)/[a-z]+/:restaurant(.*)"] ^(DPLDeepLink *link){
  // `link[@"city"]` => @"manhattan"
  // `link[@"restaurant"]` => @"nicoletta-297"
}

The above would match ‘https://trycaviar.com/manhattan/pizza/nicoletta-297’ but not ‘https://trycaviar.com/manhattan/PIZZA/nicoletta-297’ or ‘https://trycaviar.com/manhattan/pizza-places/nicoletta-297’, etc

AppLinks Support

Does your app support AppLinks? You can easily handle incoming AppLinks by importing the AppLinks category DPLDeepLink+AppLinks. The AppLinks category provides convenience accessors to all AppLinks 1.0 properties.

router[@"/timeline"] = ^(DPLDeepLink *link) {
  NSURL *referrerURL  = link.referralURL;
  NSString *someValue = link.extras[@"some-key"];
}

Running the Demo

To run the example project, run pod try DeepLinkKit in your terminal. You can also clone the repo, and run pod install from the project root. If you don't have CocoaPods, begin by follow this guide.

There are two demo apps, SenderDemo, and ReceiverDemo. ReceiverDemo has some registered routes that will handle specific deep links. SenderDemo has a couple actions that will deep link out to ReceiverDemo for fulfillment.

Run theSenderDemo build scheme first, then stop the simulator and switch the build scheme to ReceiverDemo and run again. Now you can switch back to the SenderDemo app in the simulator and tap on one of the actions.

Creating Deep Links

You can also create deep links with DPLMutableDeepLink. Between two DeepLinkKit integrated apps, you can pass complex objects via deep link from one app to another app and easily get that object back on the other end.

In the first app:

DPLMutableDeepLink *link = [[DPLMutableDeepLink alloc] initWithString:@"app-two://categories"];
link[@"brew-types"] = @[@"Ale", @"Lager", @"Stout", @"Wheat"]
link[@"beers"] = @{
  @"ales": @[
    @{
        @"name": @"Southern Tier Pumking Ale",
        @"price": @799
    },
    @{
        @"name": @"Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale",
        @"price": @799
    }
  ],
  @"lagers": @[
     ...
  ],
  ...
}

[[UIApplication sharedApplication] openURL:link.URL];

In the second app:

router[@"categories"] = ^(DPLDeepLink *link) {
  NSArray *brewTypes  = link[@"brew-types"];
  NSDictionary *beers = link[@"beers"];
}

Authors

Wes Smith
Chris Maddern

License

DeepLinkKit is available under the MIT license. See the LICENSE file for more info.

Contributing

We'd love to see your ideas for improving this library. The best way to contribute is by submitting a pull request. We'll do our best to respond to you as soon as possible. You can also submit a new Github issue if you find bugs or have questions.

Please make sure to follow our general coding style and add test coverage for new features!

uson1x / DeepLinkKit