Question

I followed the instructions here:

How can I extract the Custom URL Scheme from a .ipa file?

And was able to get the main URL scheme. For example, for the Hulu Application I got:

“hulu://”

But I actually want to figure out how to get the remaining information so that I can directly link into the Hulu Application to a particular video. I know for Hulu that the URL scheme is this:

“hulu://w/id number for video“

But i was only able to get this by going to the Hulu site and seeing them redirect me using the above scheme. Is there any way to figure out the full scheme by using the .ipa file or anything else?

There are 7 or 8 apps that I am trying to get the scheme for. The first part is easy, the 2nd part is hard.

Answer 1

If you don’t need to do it programmatically, you can simply search up the applications on http://handleopenurl.com/ – they have a great list over URL schemes. The wiki http://wiki.akosma.com/IPhone_URL_Schemes also has a comprehensive list.

When developers make their custom URL schemes, they only register the base scheme (hulu://), and they later split and match the URL programmatically. See below example:

- (BOOL)application:(UIApplication *)application handleOpenURL:(NSURL *)url {
    NSLog(@"url recieved: %@", url);
    NSLog(@"query string: %@", [url query]);
    NSLog(@"host: %@", [url host]);
    NSLog(@"url path: %@", [url path]);
    NSDictionary *dict = [self parseQueryString:[url query]];
    NSLog(@"query dict: %@", dict);
    return YES;
}

When compiled, the code revealing the steps become unreadable, so you can no longer extract that informataion, which in turn doesn’t help you much. I suggest you contact the developers of the apps in question, they have full insight in these schemes!