Mini App Embed: optional button.action.url

[deodad]

Currently the Mini App Embed object requires a value for button.action.url. This creates a subtle challenge for sites that statically render their HTML pages (which is a great thing to do and should be well supported): if someone shares a URL to their page with additional URL state like query parameters, this additional state will be lost when the Mini App is launched since the static button.action.url is used instead.

Example: https://foo.bar serves a statically generated embed with button.action.url set to https://foo.bar. The app wants to let users share urls like https://foo.bar?refer=deodad#other-state.

A simple solution to this is to make button.action.url and if it's not defined the action is assumed to be the exact URL that was shared. In the vast majority of cases this what a developer wants anyway, so this is a nice simplification for the default case.

This is backwards compatible for embeds but will require hosts to update their scraping logic accordingly.

[shazow]

Ideally it should also work with hash values in the URL (which would not be scraped but passed through directly client side?), ie. https://foo.bar?a=b#anotherpayloadhere

[deodad]

yes this would pass the entire url, updated to make it more clear this would include hash state

[vrypan]

A simple solution to this is to make button.action.url

I guess "optional" is missing from the above sentence?

I think I would prefer to leave it mandatory (the miniapp must define it), but extend the spec and expect from clients to overwrite it if the shared URL starts with the predefined url.

Right now, if button.action.url set to https://foo.bar/miniapp and I share https://foo.bar/, what happens?

[shazow]

Right now it doesn't matter what you share, the action URL is what's opened.

Not sure if this is in scope but I was imagining going the other direction: Make all .url fields optional and instead have an action id that can be accessed from the SDK context inside the app.

But personally I don't see much point in requiring action buttons at all, when the app can have its own buttons too that perform equivalent functionality.

[PirosB3]

We addressed this. Linking the announcement post

[shazow]

Yay thank you!

[deodad]

Shipped. See announcement post