CODEWITHSUNDEEP
iosruby-on-railshttp-redirectmobile-safari
padi
padi

Reputation: 797

Rails: redirect_to 'myapp://' to call iOS app from mobile safari

I have a native iOS app that can be called from Mobile Safari in iOS via myiosapp://. I also have a simple Rails app that SHOULD redirect to the native app when the request is coming from mobile. This is where I am I having problems - I can't redirect_to 'myiosapp://

I want to describe this problem as short as possible, so I made a sample app that shaves away the irrelevant information, but replicates the same problem.

Here's my routes.rb:

MyRailsApp::Application.routes.draw do
  root :to => 'redirect#index'
end

And here's redirect_controller.rb:

class RedirectController < ApplicationController
  def index
    if request_from_mobile?
      redirect_to "myiosapp://"
    else
      redirect_to "/default.html"
    end
  end

  private

  def request_from_mobile?
    request.user_agent =~ /Mobile|webOS/
  end
end

Whenever I run rails server and go to localhost::3000, I get this:

Started GET "/" for 127.0.0.1 at 2012-09-21 14:00:52 +0800
Processing by RedirectController#index as HTML
Redirected to motionapp://
Completed 302 Found in 0ms (ActiveRecord: 0.0ms)
[2012-09-21 14:00:52] ERROR URI::InvalidURIError: bad URI(absolute but no path): motionapp://
    /Users/dev/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.3-p194/lib/ruby/1.9.1/uri/generic.rb:1202:in `rescue in merge'
    /Users/dev/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.3-p194/lib/ruby/1.9.1/uri/generic.rb:1199:in `merge'
    /Users/dev/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.3-p194/lib/ruby/1.9.1/webrick/httpresponse.rb:220:in `setup_header'
    /Users/dev/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.3-p194/lib/ruby/1.9.1/webrick/httpresponse.rb:150:in `send_response'
    /Users/dev/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.3-p194/lib/ruby/1.9.1/webrick/httpserver.rb:110:in `run'
    /Users/dev/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.3-p194/lib/ruby/1.9.1/webrick/server.rb:191:in `block in start_thread'

Before posting this, I've already seen a number of similar problems, but none seemed to be more specific to how I can implement this in Rails:

How to redirect from Mobile Safari to Native iOS app (like Quora)?

iphone web app to automatically redirect to app

Upvotes: 1

Views: 4768

Answers (1)

padi
padi

Reputation: 797

Turns out there's a simple solution that is enough for the context of my app as of the moment. I just needed to handle the redirect in javascript. Other solutions are still welcome. :)

<html><head>
    <script type="text/javascript">
      var userAgent = window.navigator.userAgent;
      if (userAgent.match(/iPad/i) || userAgent.match(/iPhone/i)) {
        window.location = "myiosapp://"
      }
    </script>
  </head>
  <body>
    Some html page
  </body>
</html>

Upvotes: 4

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