iOS messaging Action issues when Appsheet hos...

AppSheet AppSheet Q&A
1

iOS messaging Action issues when Appsheet hosted in a web view object.

I recently released an iOS app to the App store (name = Service Insight)

which contains two web view objects in tabs.

The first has a reference to a login system that re-directs the user login to the Appsheet app using the browser link.

The second is a web site used as a Support page.

I discovered that when trying to tap the Phone Action icon or the Message Action icon, nothing happens.

If I do the same when accessing the app directly from a browser, these actions work as expected - making a phone call or opening the messages app on the phone.

I suspect the issue is likely because the commands are not getting properly routed to the iOS operating system.

My question :

Does anyone know of a way to work around this problem?

2

John, wow there are a couple of new things going on here.

  1. You’ve built your own app and your own login system and then are redirecting to the AppSheet web page within a webview. That is not a design point we have planned for. How do you map your logins to users in AppSheet? I’m guessing you don’t but this gives you a way to force user signin for the app without setting up signin for your AppSheet app.

  2. When our apps run within the webview in our own mobile app native host, it intercepts requests for messaging, etc and the native host is the one that launches the mesaging.

In short, there are two paths, one when the appsheet app is run in a browser and one when it is run in our native host app. You are taking a third path (a path much “less traveled”). @Brian_Sabino any thoughts?

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@praveen I must confess that I did not build the app nor the login system.

They are purchased products I am integrating together though I have full control over each to change and modify as needed.

I’ve just started down this path and not sure if it is the best way to continue.

I have yet to play with Appsheet’s login system.

You are correct that I do not map users.

I have come across certain situations where that would have been useful.

But so far it has not been a major problem.

This iOS approach will be a problem if I can’t get around the short comings.

The features of being able to call or message right from the app will be important.

I am hoping that Brian can help with this one.

4

Have you tried running your app inside AppSheet’s mobile host app (or as a white-labeled app). The problem with these other routes is that you’re assuming that embedding an AppSheet web page inside this third party shell is going to work. But it isn’t going to handle offine behavior, content caching, etc for sure. Plus unexpected issues like this one.

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@praveen

Thanks!

I have tested this for a while now and I believe offline and caching work.

I’m only seeing the issue with the tel:, sms: and mailto: URL Schemes.

Everything else seems to be good.

I’ll investigate the shell I’m using to see if something can be done there.

I like this approach in that I can combine things together as if in a single app.

I’m just beginning so I wouldn’t be surprised if there is

a

better way.

6

Offline access will work, but content caching won’t (that is, your images won’t load when you’re offline).

I don’t see any good way to make the tel: or sms: schemes work.

We have custom logic to handle these that won’t apply in your case.

The only hack you could possibly try is adding the querystring parameter webview=true to the url you’re loading in your UIWebView.

So instead of https://www.appsheet.com/start/Guid/? you’d use https://www.appsheet.com/start/Guid/?webview=true& But, this may well break something else and obviously isn’t something we support.

Even if it works now it may well break in the future.

Anything more stable than that would take some custom code on our side.

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@John_Baer1, just want to make sure you read this article. help.appsheet.com - What is a White-Label Native App? What is a White-Label Native App? help.appsheet.com