Casey LissWhat API controls these quick links?
Brandon Horst@caseyliss AppShortcuts!
Matt Corey@brandonhorst @caseyliss I don't know - my app uses AppShortcuts, but it doesn't look like Amazon’s. When looking at this view, it seems like they have a single 'Open Amazon' OpenIntent, with different parameters applied, and somehow stylized.
Matthew Cassinelli@matt1corey @brandonhorst @caseyliss It is App Shortcuts, and they've taken the Open action & made parameterized instances of it with App Shortcuts.
This is a combination of parameterized phrases from the first year of App Shortcuts & the Spotlight integration from the second year.
Here's where they start to talk about it: https://developer.apple.com/wwdc22/10170?time=851 Then the rest is in Brandon's linked video.
You can also use Suggested Entities to show nicely-designed entities in Spotlight as well
@matthewcassinelli @matt1corey @brandonhorst Granted I've only been looking at this for ten minutes, but I'm having trouble figuring out how to write an Intent that basically just deep-links into the app…? I just watched that section of the video — thank you! — but I don't think I'm grokking how to just open the app.
@matthewcassinelli @matt1corey @brandonhorst Oh wait it looks like maybe this is what I want, for iOS 18 anyway
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/appintents/openurlintent
@brandonhorst @matthewcassinelli @matt1corey Although that looks like it requires a web endpoint, which Callsheet doesn't have 😩
@caseyliss @matthewcassinelli @matt1corey It doesn’t! You can use `onOpenURL` to handle it directly from SwiftUI. I think you may also need `.handlesExternalEvents` and an Info.plist param to support a custom url sceheme.
@brandonhorst @matthewcassinelli @matt1corey This leads me to believe otherwise…?
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/appintents/openurlintent#Overview
@caseyliss @matthewcassinelli @matt1corey Oh wow, I think that line (and enforcement) was added in some recent beta. It definitely worked at one point in this beta cycle, but it is indeed failing for me now. Wicked bummer.
@brandonhorst @caseyliss @matt1corey There's been a couple other threads about this, it seems like it wasn't intentional that it was possible and isn't allowed. Probably because they can't validate the destination, and URL schemes are a major vector for security issues
@matthewcassinelli @brandonhorst @caseyliss Universal Links are a pain to setup, but once I did it, I find plenty of use for them, including In-App events
@matt1corey @matthewcassinelli @brandonhorst Honestly I really need to set up some sort of web front-end for universal links but I **so very much** do **not** want to run any sort of web server
@caseyliss @matt1corey @brandonhorst Universal Links to every intent and entity are going to be wild. Beyond everything else this year, the impact of that is so intriguing to me
Jamie Blumberg@caseyliss don't you already have 2-12 or so Rasberry Pis hosting various things out of your house? I know there's a scale difference between 4 people hitting a PiHole versus a few thousand reading an associated domains file, but technically speaking not that different of a problem to solve.
@caseyliss @matthewcassinelli @brandonhorst For sure - my website is hosted on SquareSpace, but to enable UniversalLinks, I had to jump through hoops to get the apple-app-site-association file hosted through S3 on Amazon.
So I guess I'm technically still not running a web server to do this? 🤣
(I have a terribly written and unpublished blog post I can share for this, if it applies)
@matt1corey @caseyliss @brandonhorst Matt please do, any and all App Intents blog posts are extremely useful resources because every developer is going through this
@matthewcassinelli It's coming, for sure - just need to take the time to clean it up.
Mikaela Caron 🦄@matt1corey @matthewcassinelli I just finished finally properly implementing universal links 😅 it was a wild ride
Haha typos 😅
Colin@caseyliss @matt1corey @matthewcassinelli @brandonhorst
This seems... reasonably straightforward https://medium.com/@ales.musto/using-aws-to-host-universal-links-for-ios-b887a87a4c3b
@colin @caseyliss @matthewcassinelli @brandonhorst This is basically it, but on a quick scan, it looks like the website itself is hosted from the S3 bucket.
I didn't want to host my own website, or have to completely redesign and build it - I was already in SquareSpace. For me, only the aasa file is hosted from S3, and CloudFront routes traffic between S3 or SquareSpace, depending on the URL.
Josh Strange@caseyliss CloudFront+S3+Lambda. No “servers” to manage and in fact you can probably just use CF+S3 and call it a day if you don’t need any “logic” to run. The CF can redirect all requests to an index.html that just advertises CallSheet and with Universal Links people using your app will just bounce to the app. You could even redirect to your provider (TVDB? TMDB?) in the html if for when they don’t have the app or offer a link to either get the app or go to your data provider.
Joe Fabisevich 
@caseyliss @matt1corey @matthewcassinelli @brandonhorst Late to this but you don’t really need a server, just a domain. What I do is have a Cloudflare worker that is just a JSON blob, and if it doesn't hit one of my configured routes, it will redirect to the website. It's like 10 lines of code, very little setup, and no maintenance, can share later if that sounds appealing.
SENTINELITE@mergesort @caseyliss @matt1corey @matthewcassinelli @brandonhorst I'd appreciate something like this! There was something on GitHub where they were “intercepting” the deep links (mentioned above) & routing locally, but I suppose that's no longer possible. Interesting!
Kyle Bashour@matthewcassinelli @caseyliss @matt1corey @brandonhorst @kylebshr Here's the entirety of the Cloudflare worker.js I use for Plinky. It's very straightforward — one place to manage all of my redirects and universal links in a way that's easy to edit and update, no servers needed and nothing needed to learn for when someone wants to add a route or new universal link. https://gist.github.com/mergesort/60a78f5c20a99849642e5a2f608cfe9e
Juergen@caseyliss @brandonhorst @matthewcassinelli @matt1corey try it like this, that’s how I use it.
Have a look at the AppIntentsSampleApp from Apple. :)
Have a look at the AppIntentsSampleApp from Apple. :)
@jayfm @brandonhorst @matthewcassinelli @matt1corey how did I not see that 🤦🏻♂️
Will try that; thank you!
@caseyliss @brandonhorst @matthewcassinelli @matt1corey I added it to a full app some weeks ago and it was so frustrating.
With a new app it was really easy to build everything around it.
With a new app it was really easy to build everything around it.
@caseyliss @brandonhorst @matt1corey This part of another of the latest videos walks though the basics of an Open Intent, but I'm assuming it's not what you want because you're trying to make a quicker version using the URL scheme instead, right? https://developer.apple.com/wwdc24/10210?time=592
@matthewcassinelli @brandonhorst @matt1corey For some cases, this may work as well. But annoyingly, most of what I want to do with Intents is already defined as custom callsheet:// URLs, yeah.
@caseyliss @matthewcassinelli @brandonhorst For most of my OpenIntents, I have the deep link logic directly in the Intent code - this is an example of an OpenIntent that opens a Ledger in Bills to Budget, and navigates to a specified screen, but it can also be done with an AppIntent that has ‘openAppWhenRun' set to true.
It is a parameterized AppIntent -- it still doesn't look anything like the fancy Amazon shortcut, though
@matt1corey @caseyliss @brandonhorst Did you apply the newer bits from the Spotlight video? That's separate from parameterization.
@matthewcassinelli @caseyliss @brandonhorst Got it! At least for one of my intents. Here's what I had to change:
- My AppEnum needed to define the DisplayRespresentation with both the name and symbol name, instead of just the name (see screenshot)
- My OpenIntent needed to have this parameter defined as the `target`
I don't think AppShortcuts comes into play here, although I could be wrong, as I do have an AppShortcut defined for this intent (but I always have)
@matt1corey @caseyliss @brandonhorst Within the Shortcuts app that might be the case now, but to be shown in Spotlight it’s based off App Shortcuts.
Generally this requirement you identified was added alongside the App Shortcuts spotlight update because prior to that App Shortcuts were just tiles and didn’t need the symbol.
@matthewcassinelli @caseyliss @brandonhorst Nope, it _also_ needs to be an AppShortcut - my 'Open Account' Intent satisfied all of that already, but didn't have an AppShortcut assigned. Adding that caused it to render each option explicitly in the Shortcuts app.
But... um... Each intent is showing the options for _both_!? Wow, that's a wild bug…
Michael Gorbach@matt1corey @matthewcassinelli @caseyliss @brandonhorst thanks for filing! Do you have this reproducing in a sample you can share? That would allow us to triage it quickly.
@mgorbach @matthewcassinelli @caseyliss @brandonhorst Not yet (last minute rush), but I’ll see what I can put together
@matt1corey @matthewcassinelli @caseyliss @brandonhorst thank you! It would be much appreciated if you can. We tried to repo but are not seeing this issue. A link to a build with this failure happening would also help.
Col@matt1corey @caseyliss @matthewcassinelli @brandonhorst provide the app intent to an AppIntentsProvider structure and specify the icon you want to get the the amazon fancy stuff!
@matt1corey Is `navigator` a singleton? Where is it coming from?
(A summary is perfectly acceptable; I don't necessarily need to see code)
@caseyliss Ah, important detail -- ’navigator' here is an ObservableObject that I create at the root of my SwiftUI tree, and inject into the Environment. It drives the navigation of my root NavigationSplitView and NavigationStack’s, and has methods to show sheets and inspectors, so I can control this from anywhere.
I also add that (and other things) into my `AppDependencyManager`, so I can ‘inject' them into my AppIntents using the @.AppDependency mechanism
@matt1corey Is `Navigable` an `actor`? Because it needs to be `Sendable`, no?
@caseyliss I think I have it isolated to MainActor, since it’s all UI related
@matt1corey ooooooooooh iiiiiiinnnnnnteresting 🤔
Matt Bonney@matt1corey @caseyliss can you share more about that AppDependency property wrapper? Is that a first-party thing I wasn’t aware of!?
@bonney @caseyliss It's the AppIntent Dependency Injection mechanism. Not particularly well documented, but basically you can shove a bunch of Sendable objects into an instance of AppDependencyManager, and then inject them into your AppIntents later.
I do the setup work in both my main App, and my Widget Target, and it lets me reuse the AppIntents, handling the injection appropriately either way.
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/appintents/appdependencymanager
@matt1corey Also, unrelated: the API surface for `EntitlementCheck.isEntitled(with:)`
🤩
@caseyliss Lol - it's fancy on the outside, but the implementation is... uglier…
@matt1corey this is 110% of the code I write. 😆
Ryan Ashcraft@caseyliss @matthewcassinelli @brandonhorst @matt1corey @harshil shared a workaround that is working for us:
1. Make an OpenIntent (not OpenURLIntent) and a ”DeepLink" AppEnum target. Make the OpenIntent use the DeepLink enum as the `target`.
2. On the DeepLink enum, make a property that returns the app URL for each case.
3. In the intent’s perform(), get the URL from `target` and set it to a user default.
4. In the app UI, check for this user default in an onAppear and handle the routing.
@ryanashcraft @matthewcassinelli @brandonhorst @matt1corey @harshil I love/hate this.
🍻
@ryanashcraft @matthewcassinelli @brandonhorst @matt1corey @harshil Granted, neither of these buttons actually do the thing they're claiming to, but, uh, progress! 🎉 🤪
Thanks, everyone! 💙
@caseyliss @ryanashcraft @brandonhorst @matt1corey @harshil This is glorious, as well as is this whole thread