Can we launch a "link" in iMessage app?

Question

I've got an iMessage app where basically I want to display a button and when pressed, launch another app like Safari or Maps etc.

I've tried:

if UIApplication.shared.canOpenURL(url){

but "UIApplication.shared" is only available in the main iOS app. Mine is an iMessage only app.

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

You can use the extensionContext property inside your MSMessagesAppViewController subclass to open URL like so:

NSURL *url = [NSURL URLWithString:@"https://www.apple.com/"];
[self.extensionContext openURL:url completionHandler:nil];

I haven't tested this, but I use this method to launch my iOS application from my iMessage extension app using custom url scheme. I've also used this to launch the AppStore from my iMessage extension.

Update:

Since you said you just want to open Maps, you could try this:

#import <MapKit/MapKit.h>

- (void)openMaps {
    CLLocationCoordinate2D coordinates = CLLocationCoordinate2DMake(33.651092f, -117.744250f); // coordinates of your desired location
    MKCoordinateRegion regionSpan = MKCoordinateRegionMakeWithDistance(coordinates, 5000, 5000); // 5000 is the distance in meters
    NSDictionary *options = @{MKLaunchOptionsMapCenterKey: [NSValue valueWithMKCoordinate:regionSpan.center],
                              MKLaunchOptionsMapSpanKey: [NSValue valueWithMKCoordinateSpan:regionSpan.span]};
    MKPlacemark *placemark = [[MKPlacemark alloc] initWithCoordinate:coordinates addressDictionary:nil];
    MKMapItem *mapItem = [[MKMapItem alloc] initWithPlacemark:placemark];
    [mapItem setName:@"Irvine Spectrum Center"];
    [mapItem openInMapsWithLaunchOptions:options];
}

Let me know if that works out for you.