All,
IOS already supports some level of deep linking, which is documented here: https://rocket.chat/docs/developer-guides/deeplink/. This leverages the scheme name “rocketchat” to specify that it should be opened in the app. Of course such a link would be essentially broken on desktop and Android, which is problematic as we don’t know the device ahead of time when we send links to other users.
At the same time there appears to be some work on a redirection server that will support deeplinking via URLs of this form go.rocket.chat/room?host=foo.bar.com&rid=1234&path=group/important. Thanks @aaron.ogle for making me aware of that service. This link opens the web based client on desktop and Android but does not open the installed Android client currently.
So I wanted to try to document the use cases and then hopefully provoke some discussion around current efforts to support these use cases and then also how we can define additional features required to cover all of them.
When a “deep link” URL that contains information identifying the server and the room (or DM) is clicked by a user the following use cases should be supported depending on their device:
- User on desktop should click a deep link and go to the web version of the room (or DM) referenced in the link after either signing up or logging in.
- Users with rocket.chat installed on IOS and Android should click a deep link and go directly that that room or DM after either signing up or logging in.
- Users without rocket.chat installed, should first be taken to the play store to install the app and then proceed to #2 use case.
My understanding is that today #1 is supported by the redirection server approach described above and that #2 on IOS is supported by the scheme-based approach. Does #2 on IOS also work via the redirection server approach?
What is our plan for supporting #2 on Android (across all supported versions of Android) and supporting #2 and #3 on IOS and Android?