Receiving URL commands in your own app

Now that we've configured our application with a URL scheme, it's time to add some code that can detect the app being launched from the URL and parse the commands so that we can act and execute commands issued via the URL.

How to do it…

If you're using Alloy, the following code examples can go into the alloy.js file. Otherwise, add them to your app.js file.

The way we can find out the arguments passed to the app upon launch from a URL is by using the Ti.App.getArguments method. This returns an object that has two properties we're interested in, source and url. These respectively tell us the identifier of the app that invoked the URL and the URL itself, including any parameters.

Firstly, we need to add some code to handle the detection of the URL when the app is launched or resumed, so add the following lines at the bottom of your app.js or alloy.js file:

var checkURLArgs = function() {
    var args = Ti.App.getArguments();

 ...