Debugging Deep Links and App Links in Android

Dmitrii Leonov — Mon, 18 Jul 2022 15:23:00 +0000

Most of the time, it is quite simple to debug a deep link just run your app start attach debugger, and fire a deep link, it is straightforward and can be done without any adb command.

But what if you need to start an app with a deep link/app link? How do you attach the debugger then? Well, it's time for adb.

1. Run this command once, so that your app will be waiting for the debugger to be attached before starting it.

adb shell am set-debug-app -w --persistent <com.app.package>

2. Trigger your deep link specifying activity that has an intent filter to recognize deep link sheme

adb shell am start -W -a android.intent.action.VIEW -d "<your-deep-link-url>" <com.app.package>.<your-activity-that-handle-intent>

n. Once done, remove the effect applied by step #1

adb shell am clear-debug-app <com.app.package>

More concrete example

adb shell am set-debug-app -w --persistent com.example.myapp

adb shell am start -W -a android.intent.action.VIEW -d "https://my-app-host-link.com/detail_screen_path?id=100" com.example.myapp.MainActivity

adb shell am clear-debug-app com.example.myapp

Gradle and Groovy Magic

Dmitrii Leonov — Mon, 18 Jul 2022 15:17:00 +0000

Gradle can be pretty confusing at times, especially for Android developers working on small and medium projects. In Android project Gradle is set up by default and we rarely feel a need to explore how and why things work.

Here are some questions and answers that you might've had regarding Gradle.

1. Why do we use gradlew taskName instead of gradle taskName to execute a task?
It is because in our projects we use Gradle wrapper to have 1 version of Gradle among all the developers of the project.

2. Android Studio's Modules and Gradle's Projects
An Android project is also a Gradle project. Gradle has a 1-to-1 relationship between its projects and build.gralde files. At the same what Android studio calls a "module", in Gradle is referred as sub-project.

3. Should I use ' or " for string literals?
Groovy, which is one of the languages used along with Kotlin to describe Gradle script, recognises both double and single quotation marks as a string.
String types in Groovy:

'Hello World 1' - String
"Hello World 2" - String
"Hello World $count" - GString

4. Function calls, properties, and when to use round brackets?
In Groovy:

If a function has at least one parameter you can ignore curly brackets. Fields are properties, so each class field generates setter and getter for a declared field.

Look at the code below and try to guess, how many times will the Foo.name() function will be triggered when executing ./gradlew showMagic?

class Foo {
    def name = ""

    void name(String newString) {
        name = newString
        println("Foo.name() triggered")
    }
}

tasks.create("showMagic") {
    doFirst {
        group "Whole new group"
        description "Check setter and getter capabilities"

        def foo = new Foo()

        foo.name = "string 1"
        println("showMagic() ${foo.name}")
        foo.name("string 2")
        println("showMagic() ${foo.name}")
        foo.name "string 3"
        println("showMagic() ${foo.name}")
        foo.setName("string 4")
        println("showMagic() ${foo.name}")
        foo.setName "string 5"
        println("showMagic() ${foo.name}")
        String propertyOrFunctionName = "name"
        foo."$propertyOrFunctionName" = "string 6"
        println("showMagic() ${foo.name}")
    }
}

Output:

showMagic() string 1
Foo.name() triggered
showMagic() string 2
Foo.name() triggered
showMagic() string 3
showMagic() string 4
showMagic() string 5
showMagic() string 6

5. Functions with multiple parameters
As you might have guessed from the code above, we can ignore round brackets and pass multiple parameters separated by commas:

void foo(String url, String parameter) {
    println url
    println parameter
}

tasks.create("callFoo") {
    doFirst {
        foo "google.com", 'consistency'
    }
}

DEV Community: Dmitrii Leonov

Debugging Deep Links and App Links in Android

Gradle and Groovy Magic