Linkalist

Building Better Apps

May 9, 2019

Signing up through an email address is always going to be a difficult user story but this is made especially tricky when app signup is concerned. This is because there is always a point where they new user needs to leave the app to check their email. This email confirmation invariably contains a link which will, by default send the user onto the web to finish the signup flow by entering a password. With linkalist this works, as all apps have a web version, but there remains a difficulty because the user will still need to log into the app with their new password after entering it.

Android Deep Links

This is where Android App Links or Deep Links come in. With these links, clicking the link in the email will take the user back into the app. With Deep Links, the user is presented with a choice to use the app or just go back the browser. With App Links, this choice is made for the user. For now, we're limited the behaviour to just enable Deep Links as it can be somewhat difficult to set up. The main difference is that Deep Links can be done entirely on the client while App Links need some server-side work as well.

Configuring linkalist for Deep Links

There is very little coding required to configure linkalist for deep links. The first part is to set up the manifest so that the Launch Activity accepts the deep link. This is somewhat counter-intuitive but is necessary so that the password entry dialog can exit back to the Launch Activity after it is finished.

<activity
   android:name=".activities.DiveListActivity"
   android:label="@string/app_name">
   <intent-filter>
      <action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN"/>
      <category android:name="android.intent.category.LAUNCHER"/>
   </intent-filter>
   <intent-filter android:label="Divelist Registration">
      <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:host="divelist.mobi"
         android:pathPrefix="/index.php/nonuser/user_invite"
         android:scheme="https"/>
      <data
         android:host="*.divelist.mobi"
         android:pathPrefix="/index.php/nonuser/user_invite"
         android:scheme="https"/>
   </intent-filter>
</activity>

Obviously you need to replace the "Divelist" pieces with your own app name and domain. If you want to enable this for the password reset process, you'll need to add in a second intent filter for this.

<intent-filter android:label="Divelist Password">
   <action android:name="android.intent.action.VIEW"/>
   <category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT"/>
   <category android:name="android.intent.category.BROWSABLE"/>
   <data
      android:host="divelist.mobi"
      android:pathPrefix="/index.php/nonuser/user_change_password"
      android:scheme="https"/>
   <data
      android:host="*.divelist.mobi"
      android:pathPrefix="/index.php/nonuser/user_change_password"
      android:scheme="https"/>
</intent-filter>

At this point, after you rebuild your app, the mails for password reset and registration should present you with a dialog something like that below.

Launch Activity Changes

Now you need to add a little bit of template code so that your launch activity can handle the password dialog. This is done in the onCreate function for your launch activity. Essentially we need to check if the application was launched through a deep link and if so launch the password dialog

boolean isDeepLink = LinkalistCore.getInstance().parseDeepLinkIntent(getIntent());
if (true == isDeepLink)
{
   EnterPasswordActivity.launchActivity(this);
}
else
{
   .... // whatever was here before
}

The final bit of work need is to go the onActivityResult and add a check for the request code of Enter Password dialog and continue as you would if the login sequence had completed.

if ((LoginActivity.REQUEST_LOGIN == requestCode) || (EnterPasswordActivity.REQUEST_ENTER_PASSWORD == requestCode))

Now when your users reset their password or verify their registration, they should be taken straight to a password reset dialog in your application.

One final option is that you may remove the need to confirm that password by using the requirePasswordConfirmation function. This is best called in your Application's onCreate function as are most of of the Login setup options

LinkalistCore.getInstance().requirePasswordConfirmation(false);

And that is basically it - a minimal effort way to do a user email signup while keeping the user in your app as much as possible.