Hi Friends,

Most of you might be aware about what is deeplink is..but for people who don’t know about it….

In the context of the World Wide Web, deep linking is the use of a hyperlink that links to a specific, generally searchable or indexed, piece of web content on a website (e.g., “http://example.com/path/page”), rather than the website’s home page (e.g., “http://example.com/”).

Deep linking – Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_linking

Google has suggested way to achieve the deeplink of your app from the search result.To make this happen, you might need to add intent filters to the activity in your manifest file.

Below code snippet is form Google developer page. seems pretty easy to use.

The following XML snippet shows how you might specify an intent filter in your manifest for deep linking. The URIs “example://gizmos” and“http://www.example.com/gizmos” both resolve to this activity.

<activity
    android:name="com.example.android.GizmosActivity"
    android:label="@string/title_gizmos" >
    <intent-filter android:label="@string/filter_title_viewgizmos">
        <action android:name="android.intent.action.VIEW" />
        <category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT" />
        <category android:name="android.intent.category.BROWSABLE" />
 <!-- Accepts URIs that begin with "http://www.example.com/gizmos” -->
        <data android:scheme="http"
              android:host="www.example.com"
              android:pathPrefix="/gizmos" />
        <!-- note that the leading "/" is required for pathPrefix-->
        <!-- Accepts URIs that begin with "example://gizmos” -->
        <data android:scheme="example"
              android:host="gizmos" />

    </intent-filter>
</activity>

What happens if you want the same activity to handle different deeplink Url. Simple add more intent filters. But it made my manifest look huge and if you are working on big enterprise app, probably you might need to add lot of intent filters. I was looking for a library which does all these hardwork , easy to extend and yet make the manifest look simple. Fortunately, there is a saver. airbnb has a fantastic library which helps me to achieve my goal. easy to use, code looks simple and neat. Thanks to airbnb DeepLinkDispatch. refer the github link for more info.

The most important thing i was looking on how ease to add multiple deeplink url’s

Single Deeplinks

@DeepLink("foo://example.com/deepLink/{id}")
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 the ID...
    }
    ...
  }
}

Multiple Deeplinks

@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 the ID...
    }
    ...
  }
}

Query parameter

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 example://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...
      }
    }
  }
}

Refer the github for more information. Thanks airbnb. Happy coding 🙂