7

All of a sudden deep links to my app stopped working from within the Facebook web view but they work fine when I open the deep link within Safari (or click share in the web view and choose Safari).

I added all necessary open graph tags for my resource and the app links as stated here: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/applinks/add-to-content

Has anyone experienced the same behaviour since the new Facebook app update? Version: (34.0.0.36.265)

I'm getting the usual prompt if I want to leave Facebook but upon clicking it nothing happens and the device stays in the Facebook web view. I checked the scraper information on https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/og/object/ but there are no errors reported.

Here is the URL/resource that gets shared and routes to the deep link (server might need to wake): https://www.qonnect-it.com/mexx

Any ideas?

j4zz
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3 Answers3

11

I'm having the exact same issue with the latest Facebook app update, seems to be something on their end rather than on your app (or even mine).

I suggest going to https://www.facebook.com/help/186570224871049 and report the problem so we can escalate this issue quickly.

Ivan Bruel
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2

Glad.. we found this defect logged. This has taken aways days of my productive work. Now, something weird that we noticed is that, while nothing happens even after selected "Open App", try to slide the web view holding the header a lil bit and for your surprise, the deep-link then works. Funny and interesting. Let me know if anyone else also experiences it.

bhasker_kottapally
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0

If you’re looking for a possible workaround until this is fixed, use facebook’s mobile hosting API. It seems that tapping on links created with it don’t get handed to the currently buggy iOS facebook in-app-browser and therefore work.

Here’s a short step-by-step guide (adapted from the documentation):

  1. Create a new app on facebook (or use your existing one).
  2. Request an access token for the app: curl "https://graph.facebook.com/oauth/access_token?client_id=YOUR_APP_ID&client_secret=YOUR_APP_SECRET&grant_type=client_credentials"

  3. Create the app-link by filling in the data you usually define in your meta tags in your page header:

    curl https://graph.facebook.com/app/app_link_hosts \
-F access_token="TOKEN_FROM_STEP_2" \
-F name="YOUR_APP_NAME" \
-F ios=' [
  {
    "url" : "your://deep/link",
    "app_store_id" : YOUR_APP_STORE_APP_ID,
    "app_name" : "YOUR_APP_NAME",
  },
]' \
-F android=' [
  {
    "url" : "your://deep/link",
    "package" : "your.package.name",
    "app_name" : "YOUR_APP_NAME"
  },
]' \
-F web=' {
  "should_fallback" : false,
}'

  4. Use the returned ID {"id":"somethingsomething"} to request your canonical URLs:

    curl -G https://graph.facebook.com/ID_FROM_STEP_3 \
-d access_token="TOKEN_FROM_STEP_2" \
-d fields=canonical_url \
-d pretty=true

  5. Directly use the returned canonical URL https://fb.me/ID for deep linking instead of linking to your usual page.

j4zz
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