I currently share posts on Social Media and include a backlink to the post on my Glide app. I did realize that obtaining the deep link while editing the Glide App does not produce the correct link…
So in order to get the correct link, I have to go to my Live App instead (sort of annoying). After I posted my link via Social, I tested it and brought me to the correct post, so it seemed like that worked. Then a few weeks later, I was notified that my backlink is only redirecting to my home page and not that particular post. So, I went back and copied the deep link again and noticed they were now different…
My question is, why do deep links change and how do I prevent that from happening? Does it change whenever there is a change to the post? So if I update something, the entire URL is changed? I do have Row ID’s for each Post
How much have you modified in your app since your first deep link?
There’s a lot of information encoded in that url, such as Row ID, Tab number, and I believe the path to navigate to that screen. It’s not as simple as just pointing to the detail screen of row in a sheet. It has to know how to get there, so it know which tab you are on and the path so the back button can navigate you out of that detail screen.
If you moved a lot of stuff around and restructured your app flow, then the old link might be trying to follow a path that doesn’t exist anymore and just defaults to the home tab.
Thanks for the reply Jeff. I don’t believe I modified my app too much, but I might have moved columns around, so that’s probably what did it. I guess I am used to web pages that dont change regardless of updates, so thats good to know. Its just annoying as I use one of those Link in Bios for Instagram where each post feeds back to the specific page, so if I change a column in the app, all my links in the bio will be invalid now. At least I know what to avoid doing or knowing the consequences of such actions lol.
It’s not entirely clear how the deep link process works, but as you can see in this post, there is a lot more to that url than just a random string of text. It’s also not clear what each part of that decoded url does.
I would have think that a deep link wouldn’t randomly change itself, but if some part that’s critical to the hierarchy of the app flow changes, then I guess it’s possible for the link to change.
My best guess is that it’s structured this way because you can potentially have your app set up to navigate to the same row multiple different ways, though multiple different tabs or multiple different lists. I believe that the deep link is trying to put you inside the same list or tab that you used to share the link. One key difference between a glide app and links to other websites, is that the link to a glide app will keep you inside the correct path to that screen. A simpler web link takes you directly to a page, but gives you no clues how to navigate there. On a web link you can’t hit the back button to navigate back up the hierarchy like you can with a glide app.