Pass data between two Apps by url scheme in swift?

Question

There are two test Apps called Sender & Receiver

They communicate with each other by Url Scheme. I would like to send a String from Sender to Receiver, is that possible?

Detail about the String:

I both create Textfields in Sender and Receiver, I would text some String on Sender Textfield. When I click button, the String will show on the Receiver Textfield.

It seems that I have to implement NSNotificationCenter.defaultCenter().postNotificationName in my Apps Receiver

Here is my App Receiver code:

In Appdelegate

func application(application: UIApplication, openURL url: NSURL, sourceApplication: String?, annotation: AnyObject) -> Bool {

    calledBy = sourceApplication
    fullUrl = url.absoluteString
    scheme = url.scheme
    query = url.query
}

In viewController

override func viewDidLoad() {
    super.viewDidLoad()

    NSNotificationCenter.defaultCenter().addObserver(self, selector: #selector(ViewController.displayLaunchDetails), name: UIApplicationDidBecomeActiveNotification, object: nil)
    // Do any additional setup after loading the view, typically from a nib.
}

func displayLaunchDetails() {
    let receiveAppdelegate = UIApplication.sharedApplication().delegate as! AppDelegate
    if receiveAppdelegate.calledBy != nil {
        self.calledByText.text = receiveAppdelegate.calledBy
    }
    if receiveAppdelegate.fullUrl != nil {
        self.fullUrlText.text = receiveAppdelegate.fullUrl
    }
    if receiveAppdelegate.scheme != nil {
        self.schemeText.text = receiveAppdelegate.scheme
    }
    if receiveAppdelegate.query != nil {
        self.queryText.text = receiveAppdelegate.query
    }
}

Now, I only can show the information about the url like this

Hope to get some suggestion!

Precarious

Answer 1

Yes, you can use query string.

url.query contains the query string. For example, in the URL iOSTest://www.example.com/screen1?textSent="Hello World", the query string is textSent="Hello World".

Normally we use URLSchemes for deeplinking too, therefore the URLScheme specifies which app to open and the path in the url specifies which screen to open and query string has additional parameters which we want to send to the app.

url.query is a string, therefore you will have to parse it to get the value you need: For example, in the URL iOSTest://www.example.com/screen1?key1=value1&key2=value2, the query string is key1=value1&key2=value2. I'm writing code to parse it but make sure you test it for your case:

    let params = NSMutableDictionary()
    let kvPairs : [String] = (url.query?.componentsSeparatedByString("&"))!
    for param in  kvPairs{
        let keyValuePair : Array = param.componentsSeparatedByString("=")
        if keyValuePair.count == 2{
            params.setObject(keyValuePair.last!, forKey: keyValuePair.first!)
        }
    }

params will contain all key value pairs in query string. Hope it helps :]

In case you don't want to do deep-linking, you can directly append the queryString to scheme. eg: iOSTest://?textSent="Hello World"

Remark

Nice answer. You should add information about base64 if you want to pass some data other than strings. – Havelock

Great answer, well explained and with a clear example. – Symposiarch

Is it also possible to pass objects (arrays/dictionaries) to another app ? – Berberidaceous

Answer 2

Of course you can. You just compose your app launch URL and pass the parameters like this

iOSTest://?param1=Value1&param2=Valuew

and then parse it in UIApplicationDelegate

Neogothic

but this link is not clickable. When I'm trying to share this URL to another app i.e - on WhatsApp. Then it's not clickable. How can make it clickable? – Stripy

In this case probably the universal link will help you #35610167 – Neogothic