Handling Deeplinks

To provide a consistent pattern when the user clicks a shortcut to launch the app, the code to handle the shortcut’s uri, should be done in the App class’ OnAppLinkReceived() method. In order for each platform to pass the uri to this method, some additional work is required.

Android

In order for the platform to launch your app from a shortcut, it needs to be told that the shortcut’s uri can be handled by the app. This is done by adding an IntentFilter attribute to the MainActivity.

[Activity(Label = "AppShortcuts Sample",
          Theme = "@style/MainTheme")]
[IntentFilter(new[] { Intent.ActionView },
              Categories = new[] { Intent.CategoryDefault },
              DataScheme = "asc",
              DataHost = "AppShortcutsApp",
              AutoVerify = true)]
public class MainActivity : global::Xamarin.Forms.Platform.Android.FormsAppCompatActivity
{
    ...

This is all that needs to be done for Android, the FormsAppCompatActivity will look to see if the app launched with a Uri and pass this through to the App class.

iOS

iOS will automatically launch the app from a shortcut, however, the FormsApplicationDelegate is not setup to pass the data through to the App class. To do this, the AppDelegate’s PerformActionForShortcutItem() needs to be overridden.

public override void PerformActionForShortcutItem(UIApplication application, UIApplicationShortcutItem shortcutItem, UIOperationHandler completionHandler)
{
    var uri = Plugin.AppShortcuts.iOS.ArgumentsHelper.GetUriFromApplicationShortcutItem(shortcutItem);
    if (uri != null)
    {
        Xamarin.Forms.Application.Current.SendOnAppLinkRequestReceived(uri);
    }
}

UWP

Similar to iOS, a UWP app will launch the app when the shortcut is clicked, but needs some additional setup to pass the Uri back to the Forms App class.

A restriction of UWP is that its implementation of shortcuts doesn’t provide the ability to set multiple properties. In order for The Plugin to overcome this, the shortcut’s ID and Uri are serialized into a JSON object.

Firstly, in the UWP MainPage call the helper method to split the NavigationArgs and pass this to the Forms App. Then override the OnNavigatedTo() to call it. Your UWP MainPage should look similar to this:

public sealed partial class MainPage : WindowsPage
{
    public MainPage()
    {
        this.InitializeComponent();
        LoadApplication(new App());
    }

    protected override void OnNavigatedTo(NavigationEventArgs e)
    {
        base.OnNavigatedTo(e);
        OnLaunchedEvent(e.Parameter.ToString());
    }

        public void OnLaunchedEvent(string arguments)
        {
            if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(arguments))
            {
                var argsUri = JumplistArgumentsHelper.GetUriFromJumplistArguments(arguments);
                Xamarin.Forms.Application.Current.SendOnAppLinkRequestReceived(argsUri);
            }
        }
    }

Next, in the UWP App class, modify the OnLaunched() method so that if rootFrame.Content is not null, then it calls the MainPage’s OnLaunchedEvent() directly:

protected override void OnLaunched(LaunchActivatedEventArgs e)
{
    ...

    if (rootFrame.Content == null)
    {
        rootFrame.Navigate(typeof(MainPage), e.Arguments);
    }
    else
    {
        var page = rootFrame.Content as MainPage;
        page?.OnLaunchedEvent(e.Arguments);
    }
    Window.Current.Activate();
}

To see this in the context of an app, please see the sample provided

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