QR codes that route to the appropriate app store

9 comments

• classictraffic 12 minutes 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 39 minutes ago

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

  [-]
  • ericpauley 37 minutes ago

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

  • matthuggins 16 minutes ago

    Yep, that's what it is.

• m4tthumphrey 32 minutes ago

  Err wut... redirecting based on user agents?

• elendilm 17 minutes 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. We will hopefully 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 open the original Playstore/Appstore page.

  And yes, we used userAgent for identifying the platform.

  If anyone is interested, here is the code

      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 36 minutes ago

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

• MengerSponge 25 minutes ago

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

• Svoka 37 minutes 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