Nextcloud-deck: open link to a deck board/card directly in the deck app

[jakobroehrl]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
If I click on a deck link the browser pops up

Describe the solution you'd like
Open it directly in the deck app
It's working for the android file app and it's super convenient:
https://github.com/nextcloud/android/pull/5345

ToDo

• [x] Implement SyncManager#readAccountsForHostWithReadAccessToBoard @desperateCoder
• [ ] [Implement IntentFilter in AndroidManifest](https://github.com/stefan-niedermann/nextcloud-deck/issues/498#issuecomment-631775782)
• [ ] [Implement Activity to pick the correct Account to use](https://github.com/stefan-niedermann/nextcloud-deck/issues/498#issuecomment-631615680)

[stefan-niedermann]

If i understood you correct, the link must propose to open links beginning with the protocol nc:// followed by directlink/ plus for example deck/5/list/4/card3. So for example a link that gets opened by deck is:

nc://directlink/deck/5/list/4/card/3

This is possible, but who uses this kind of link? The greates user experience would be to detect a link with the part [...]/index.php/apps/deck/[...] and try to parse it. Unfortunately i don't know a way to achieve this because in our scenario the hostname is variable and we do not have a custom protocol.

Therefore your proposed solution would work but, well, where are such links used?

[jakobroehrl]

I don't know how to solve it, but I think if User A sends a board or card link to User B via Chat or Mail and User B opens the link on mobile it would be nice if the deck app opens an not the browser.

[stefan-niedermann]

🤷‍♂️ Maybe one can create intent-filters dynamically at runtime (when we know the hosts).

Any help, hints and PRs appreciated.

[szaimen]

If i understood you correct, the link must propose to open links beginning with the protocol nc:// followed by directlink/ plus for example deck/5/list/4/card3. So for example a link that gets opened by deck is:

nc://directlink/deck/5/list/4/card/3

This is possible, but who uses this kind of link? The greates user experience would be to detect a link with the part [...]/index.php/apps/deck/[...] and try to parse it. Unfortunately i don't know a way to achieve this because in our scenario the hostname is variable and we do not have a custom protocol.

Therefore your proposed solution would work but, well, where are such links used?

Actuallyc this is exactly the same what the android app does:
look here: https://github.com/nextcloud/android/pull/5345/files#diff-84fb62e1c8a8f1b095012858ba4dc95dR124-R131

For your app this should work (didn't test):

                <data android:scheme="http"
                    android:scheme="https"
                    android:host="*"
                    android:pathPattern=".*/index.php/apps/deck/.*"
                    />

to make it work also if pretty urls are enabled, this is proably better:

                <data android:scheme="http"
                    android:scheme="https"
                    android:host="*"
                    android:pathPattern=".*/apps/deck/.*"
                    />

[stefan-niedermann]

interesting. Will this not open a app chooser everytime one clicks any link?

[szaimen]

interesting. Will this not open a app chooser everytime one clicks _any_ link?

No, because it will only open the app chooser if the pattern matches, which is the pattern that you told him to look for: in this case the link must be a http or https link and contain /index.php/apps/deck/ or /apps/deck/

[stefan-niedermann]

Aah, i got it. Will have a look at it, thanks for the hint!

[szaimen]

btw: links from the deck app seems to contain always the following: /apps/deck/#/
So you could probably expand the pattern that I've suggested from ".*/apps/deck/.*" to ".*/apps/deck/#/.*"

But you should make sure that all links contain that pattern yourself.

[szaimen]

Actually, to make it also in multiuser-environments right, the following is maybe helpful:
https://github.com/nextcloud/android/pull/5345#issuecomment-582066821

Although I have to say, that point 4 and 5 were differently implemented: the app always presents an account chooser, if more than one account matching the domain was found.

And point 3 wasn't completely implemented: it doesn't open the browser if no username was found matching the domain. There was a discussion about it, but it was decided to not implement it in this PR:
https://github.com/nextcloud/android/pull/5345#discussion_r383392981

Instead of opening the link in the browser, you could also decide to ask the user, if they want to create an account...

[stefan-niedermann]

• If no user matches the account, open link in browser
• Else: Synchronize all boards of the given user lists from this host
  
  
  
  • If no user has permission to access to this board / card, open link in browser
  
  
  • Else if only one user has access to this board / card, open it in the app
  
  
  • Else if multiple users have access to this board / card, display an account chooser from which view this board / card should be opened
  
  

The sync step is necessary in order to make sure that the board hasn't shared recently with the user.

I would handle it similar to receiving push notifications: We open an activity with a button "Open in browser" and a disabled button "Open in app" which gets only enabled as soon as we are sure we have a user with access permission.

[szaimen]

• If no user matches the account, _open link in browser_

You could also offer the user to log into an existing account that matches the url...

[stefan-niedermann]

Yeaaaaaaaaah.... let's start with small steps and enhance it later :laughing:

There are some issues, because we use only Single-Sign-On and it's not that easy because first we would have to fix https://github.com/nextcloud/Android-SingleSignOn/issues/106 (or need to be able to pass a host to the "Add Account" activity of the files app)

[szaimen]

actually this wouldn't work:

<data android:scheme="http"
  android:scheme="https"
  android:host="*"
  android:pathPattern=".*/apps/deck/.*"
  />

What will work though is:

<data android:scheme="http" />
<data android:scheme="https" />
<data android:host="*" />
<data android:pathPattern="/.*apps/deck/..*" />

[desperateCoder]

I think I'm done here, but I couln't test it yet (no UI). If it dies, just tell, gonna be fixed.

[stefan-niedermann]

Okay, i think i have a proof of concept in PR #563
Though there are some issues left (see linked PR), help would be appreciated.