Is it possible to register a http+domain-based URL Scheme for iPhone apps, like YouTube and Maps?

Question

I\'d like to have iOS to open URLs from my domain (e.g. http://martijnthe.nl) with my app whenever the app is installed on the phone, and with Mobile Safari in case it is no

Answer 1

I found that the selected answer works for the browser apps but I was having issues with the code working in non browser apps that implement a UIWebView.

The problem for me was a user on the Twitter app would click a link that would take them to my site through a UIWebView in the Twitter app. Then when they clicked a button from my site Twitter tries to be fancy and only complete the window.location if the site is reachable. So what happens is a UIAlertView pops up saying are you sure you want to continue and then immediately redirects to the App Store without a second popup.

My solution involves iframes. This avoids the UIAlertView being presented allowing for a simple and elegant user experience.

jQuery

var redirect = function (location) {
    $('body').append($('').attr('src', location).css({
        width: 1,
        height: 1,
        position: 'absolute',
        top: 0,
        left: 0
    }));
};

setTimeout(function () {
    redirect('http://itunes.apple.com/app/id');
}, 25);

redirect('custom-uri://');

Javascript

var redirect = function (location) {
    var iframe = document.createElement('iframe');
    iframe.setAttribute('src', location);
    iframe.setAttribute('width', '1px');
    iframe.setAttribute('height', '1px');
    iframe.setAttribute('position', 'absolute');
    iframe.setAttribute('top', '0');
    iframe.setAttribute('left', '0');
    document.documentElement.appendChild(iframe);
    iframe.parentNode.removeChild(iframe);
    iframe = null;
};

setTimeout(function () {
    redirect('http://itunes.apple.com/app/id');
}, 25);

redirect('custom-uri://');

EDIT:

Add position absolute to the iframe so when inserted there isn't a random bit of whitespace at the bottom of the page.

Also it's important to note that I have not found a need for this approach with Android. Using window.location.href should work fine.