How to create link to auto open a particular service

[TechBoyJK]

I'm trying to figure out how I can reproduce something smarturl.it is doing.

Say you have a link to a youtube video, they claim you can create a smarturl.it redirect that will automatically open the service the link is intended for.

They have service based redirects for spotify, itunes, etc.

Is there way to force a url to try and open a specific service? I'm not aware that there is.

For instance, say I want to create a redirect to a youtube.com video, is there anyway to modify the url so that when opened on a mobile device it will automatically open up in the Youtube app?

https://manage.smarturl.it/ -> streaming redirect

All I can gather from that is they actually ask the user what their preference is and save it as a cookie for the next time. But what does the cookie do to push the redirect to the specific app?

 

[Ken g6]

It sounds like all they're doing is detecting device type (Apple vs. Android vs. Windows vs. whatever) in the headers, and redirecting to the appropriate URL. (iTunes vs. something else - Google Play?) It appears you have to provide appropriate URLs yourself.

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

They also appear to have IP-based country detection.

 

[TechBoyJK]

It sounds like all they're doing is detecting device type (Apple vs. Android vs. Windows vs. whatever) in the headers, and redirecting to the appropriate URL. (iTunes vs. something else - Google Play?) It appears you have to provide appropriate URLs yourself.

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

They also appear to have IP-based country detection.

Sort of. They have 'device specific redirects' that choose your device (windows, android, etc), and 'location based' redirection that looks up your IP and forwards accordingly.

But for 'service specific' redirects, they're saying it'll open up the desired app.

My guess is it's something being done in javascript; as for the life of me can't figure out any other way to force a link in a browser to open up a local app on your machine.

 

[purbeast0]

all apps have a unique app ID. i didn't read this whole tutorial, but i'm guessing it has something to do with adding a specific type of link and include the app id inside of it somewhere.

http://iosdevelopertips.com/cocoa/launching-your-own-application-via-a-custom-url-scheme.html

EDIT:

actually looks simpler than that, looks like you just create a custom url scheme for your apps and you can "link" to it, and also pass in params to basically deep link into the app to do what you want it to do.

 

[TechBoyJK]

Ok, I haven't messed with anything iOS in a long time.

Is that saying the url's are like

youtube://loadVid=76932010asd