QR codes that route to the appropriate app store

9 comments

• classictraffic 4 hours ago

  I agree with the other commenters that this is a pretty simple engineering problem, but I still enjoyed reading about edge cases the author worked to address (they could have taken the easy road with this but tried not to). I forgot that Safari on iPad doesn't specify iPad in user agent headers

• Tiberium 4 hours ago

  Is this a whole blog post for a simple backend that just routes based on the User-Agent?

  [-]
  • ericpauley 4 hours ago

    Believe it or not there are entire companies that are (to simplify, of course) just that: https://www.adjust.com/

  • matthuggins 4 hours ago

    Yep, that's what it is.

• m4tthumphrey 4 hours ago

  Err wut... redirecting based on user agents?

• elendilm 4 hours ago

  For our apps Slyp and SlypBusiness, we had the same QR code for each app open Playstore/Appstore page of the app depending on the phone. Hopefully, we will start rolling out Slyp next week.

  Just have a branded link (like https://slyp.app/Slyp or https://slyp.app/SlypBusiness) to the official web page and have the js in that page auto-redirect and open the original Playstore/Appstore page.

  And yes, we used userAgent for identifying the platform.

  If anyone is interested, here is the code. May not cover all edge cases but works for our usecase. The code was wrung together in a hurry a year ago.

      window.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', (event) => {
          let app = 'Slyp'
  
          var userAgent = navigator.userAgent.toLowerCase();
          if (userAgent.indexOf('android') > -1) {
            window.location.href = `https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ndcurve.${app}`;
          } else if (userAgent.indexOf('iphone') > -1 || userAgent.indexOf('ipod') > -1 || userAgent.indexOf('ipad') > -1 || userAgent.indexOf('mac') > -1) {
                if (app === "Slyp")
                  window.location.href = 'https://apps.apple.com/app/<app_id>';
                else if (app === "SlypBusiness")
                  window.location.href = 'https://apps.apple.com/app/<app_id>';
                else
                  window.location.href = 'https://slyp.app';
          } else {
            window.location.href = `https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ndcurve.${app}`;
          }
      });

• arccy 4 hours ago

  it's just a server side redirect based on the user agent headers

• Svoka 4 hours ago

  I thought it was something clever, but it shows as URL in QR Scanner, not an APP, which opens browser after activating it, then user would have to confirm redirect to App Store on empty page

  TL;DR: it is HTTP redirect based on User-Agent header

• MengerSponge 4 hours ago

  I hate QR codes. I don't trust them.