Android App Links not working, is it because of Annotations?

Question

I'm new to Android, still learning it, and I have a project that uses AndroidAnnotations, and want to implement App Links.

I read the documentation (here) and even read some questions here on Stackoverflow.

Following the documentation, the intent-filter inside the Manifest is:

<intent-filter android:autoVerify="true">
            <action android:name="android.intent.action.VIEW" />
            <action android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT" />
            <action android:name="android.intent.category.BROWSABLE" />
            <data android:scheme="http" android:host="real.host.here" />
            <data android:scheme="https" android:host="real.host.here" />
</intent-filter>

The intent is inside an activity, and the only thing different from all the examples I found is that my activity is like this:

<activity
    android:name=".activities.MainActivity_" ...>
    <intent-filter...>...</intent-filter>
</activity>

Because of AndroidAnnotations, the name is ".MainActivity_", not "MainActivity".

Beside that, the hosted assetlinks.json is accessible by HTTPS connection, here is my file:

[{
  "relation": ["delegate_permission/common.handle_all_urls"],
  "target": {
    "namespace": "android_app",
    "package_name": "com.my.package.name",
    "sha256_cert_fingerprints":["32:D9:9E:17:2E:C7:B4:82:12:96:C8:3E:D1:51:56:3F:7C:ED:97:69:F9:4A:39:54:4C:7B:AD:8A:AD:27:8F:45"]
  }
}]

The SHA256 fingerprints is from the certificate I use to build the release version of the app.

I already tested with the Statement List Generator and Tester tool and the result is a success.

And just to be sure, I always test with the signed apk and the phone I'm testing it is an Android 6.0.

When I confirm the digital asset link files with this

https://digitalassetlinks.googleapis.com/v1/statements:list?
source.web.site=https://<domain1>:<port>&
relation=delegate_permission/common.handle_all_urls

I get this message:

... "debugString": "********************* ERRORS *********************\nNone!\ ...

But when I try this command

adb shell am start -a android.intent.action.VIEW \
-c android.intent.category.BROWSABLE \
-d "http://<domain1>:<port>"

It opens the browser, not the app.

I really would like to know what could be wrong here.

Write a test activity that doesn't use AndroidAnnotations, add that filter to it, and try it out. While that's not an unheard of library it isn't common enough that too many people have tried it with deep links. — Gabe Sechan, Jan 19 '17 at 18:21
I tried to create an empty activity just to redirect to my mainActivity, but it didn't work. (the redirect worked fine, the App Links didn't). — BarbaAlGhul, Jan 19 '17 at 21:47

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 20 '17 at 17:54

I found my own problem.

First I found that inside the intent-filter,

<action android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT" />
<action android:name="android.intent.category.BROWSABLE" />

should be

<category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT" />
<category android:name="android.intent.category.BROWSABLE" />

But even after that, it wasn't working. So I found the real problem.

See here:

<data android:scheme="http" android:host="real.host.here" />
<data android:scheme="https" android:host="real.host.here" />

The problem was, my host provides only an HTTPS protocol, there is no HTTP for my website. After I remove the "http" data line, it worked like a charm. There is no problem using the AndroidAnnotations.

Android App Links not working, is it because of Annotations?

1 Answers1