Android deep links to app content
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Can we agree to have a standard for app deep links on Android (and maybe in other OS's)?
I haven't done my research on the topic, also I am not a mobile or Android developer. But I know there can be links that apps can open.
Create Deep Links to App Content | App architecture | Android Developers
To allow users to enter your app from links, you must add intent filters for the relevant activities in your app manifest. These intent filters allow deep linking to the content in any of your activities…
Android Developers (developer.android.com)
Maybe every implementation of a GUI for the ActivityPub should have a "open in app" button that will prompt for any of the compatible apps installed on your device tô open that content.
Example 1: I am in this Forum (activitypub.space) and I want to reply to this thread using my Mastodon account. I click the button "open in app" and chose moshidon@floss.social as the app. Then Moshidon shows me the original post on its UI and I can reply using my Mastodon account.
Example 2: I'm browsing Lemmy on voyagerapp@mastodon.social and find a really interesting and funny meme I want to boost on Mastodon. I click the three dots (kebab) button and choose the option "open in another app…". The OS (Android, mainly) prompts me which app I want to open with. Again, I choose Moshidon e boost it to my followers.
It would be a very nice way to integrate these apps. The scheme protocol keyword could be "activitypub".
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I won't pretend to be an expert on this matter.
The crux of the problem is that these open in app associations are associated by domain... and that the fediverse is split across thousands of domains essentially makes it a non-starter.
For example, take a look at NewPipe. This is the domain association popup.
Yikes!
Unfortunately I am also not an Android developer so I don't have any clue what the solution would be!
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That said...! benpate@mastodon.social has been working on something called Activity Intents (https://w3id.org/fep/3b86) that offloads this from the browser layer and onto the web apps themselves.
It's something that could function as a stopgap until such time that a better solution is found for app-based clients.
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Another solution involves the standard OAuth2 login flow to authenticate a user, and then using the ActivityPub API (aka C2S) to perform actions on behalf of the remote user.
I talked about this one a bit in my talk at FediCon.
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At least for actors, we have the acct: URI scheme:
I did a little work with using the scheme in a Web page.
I'd like to see more Fediverse apps registering themselves to handle the acct: URI scheme, so at least you could link to an actor with
<a>Evan Prodromou</a>and go straight to a profile interface that you could interact with (follow, block, and so on). -
Oh, here I am also. Seems like there's a problem with the
outboxcollection in NodeBB, though. -
You're right! NodeBB serves an outbox but doesn't put anything in it.
Happy to work towards rectifying it... It just didn't seem to break anything and you're honestly one of the first who even noticed
