simplest cross-browser check if protocol handler is registered

javascript, protocol-handler

Solution

There is this old tricks that it always never fails me.

The core functionality that you need is `setTimeout`. I will tell you in detail:

setTimeout(function() {
  window.location = "http://itunes.com/app/yourapplocation";
}, 200);

// once you do the custom-uri, it should properly execute the handler, otherwise, the settimeout that you set before will kick in
window.location = "myapp://superlink";

Now you mentioned that it maybe a link or links so I made this nice function just for your convenience:

HTML code

<a href="myapp://superlink" data-href-alt="http://itunes.com/app/yourapplocation">Click here</a>

JS code

$("a[href*='myapp://']").click(function(e)
{
  var el = $(this);
  setTimeout(function() {
    window.location = el.data("data-href-alt");
  }, 200);

  // once you do the custom-uri, it should properly execute the handler, otherwise, the settimeout that you set before will kick in
  window.location = el.data("href");

  e.preventDefault();
});

Hope this will help you :)

Problem

When user clicks link with custom protocol (like `myapp://superlink`) I need either launch an app or allow user to download and run configuration app I am looking for cross-browser way to check if custom protocol is registered I've tried to determine this by checking user agent server-side (for IE) [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\5.0\User Agent\Post Platform] "myapp"="" sends ``` `....NET CLR 3.0.30729; .NET4.0C; .NET4.0E; InfoPath.3; **myapp**` ``` as user-agent This is good, clean way, easy configuration: just download .reg file and run it or propagiate via ms windows policy I can't fix this for Chrome and Firefox Are there any client-side solution (in js)? My enviroment: IE8+, Chrome (latest), Firefox(latest)

Original source

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