Sharesheet - share to Facebook blank share

[itbeyond]

I have spent a lot of time with the sharesheet system and it works perfectly for all shares except Facebook. On all other providers I get the link and text as expected and these links all work correctly however every time I share to Facebook the share panel is blank. If I then manually PASTE the url for the sharesheet page it loads the link box in the FB share correctly.

I have checked the BranchObject is created correctly in the links views of the Dashboard so the BO creation as you would expect is right based on it working for everything but FB.

Any clues?

PS: This issue seems to be only happening in Android 4.X seems to work ok in 5+

[renesansz]

@itbeyond ,
Hmm, weird, are you using other plugins for Facebook?

[itbeyond]

No I am not. Same exact code on Android 5 works perfectly. I have another Android 4 test machine here I will give it a try tomorrow and see what it does.

[renesansz]

@itbeyond ,
I see, there were Facebook share sheet related issues before but they were using a plugin.
However, can you provide the log if does give an error or something?

[GerTea]

I've got the same issue!
I haven't had the time to really look into it and thought its maybe temporarily. Perhaps fixed in version 2 of the branch android SDK which was released 9 days ago?

[renesansz]

@Floppy1009 , can you provide some logs and other details for your setup? Also are you using other plugins along w/ Branch?

[renesansz]

I'm using the testbed app, so far this is how it looks.
I'm on Android 4.4.4

Is there something missing with the share functionality?

[GerTea]

@renesansz
At least in the console there are no errors or anything.
The callbacks give these results:

Share sheet launched: "OK"
Channel selected: {"channelName":"Facebook"}
Share sheet dimissed: "OK"

Is there a way enable more logging?

Currently I'm using Version 2.1.7 with the Branch SDK version 1.14.4

[renesansz]

@Floppy1009 could you do adb on your terminal (command line)?
adb logcat -s CordovaBranchSDK

[GerTea]

@renesansz there was not that much output to be honest :D

adb logcat -s CordovaBranchSDK
--------- beginning of /dev/log/system
--------- beginning of /dev/log/main
D/CordovaBranchSDK(19074): [USER_ID]
D/CordovaBranchSDK(19074): [LINK_ID]
D/CordovaBranchSDK(19074): Creating link properties
D/CordovaBranchSDK(19074): {"channelName":"Facebook"} 

Here a screenshot of the screen which appears after without the link (just that you have seen it at least)

[renesansz]

ohh, I see..
hmm. I'm still figuring out the native implementation for the showShareSheet.
The implementation is correct as instructed from the docs, however I can't point out the issue.

[aaustin]

Hey @Floppy1009 - I think I know what the issue is with Facebook in particular. It seems that in the share previewer window that Facebook scrapes the Branch link to populate the messages in that preview and ignores the Android intent data.

While testing on our native Android SDK, I found that you can control the appearance of that message with the title, contentDescription and contentImageUrl of the Branch Universal Object that you use to trigger the showShareSheet. Here's an example:

Branch.createBranchUniversalObject({
  canonicalIdentifier: 'monster/12345',
  title: 'Meet Mr. Squiggles',
  contentDescription: 'Your friend Josh has invited you to meet his awesome monster, Mr. Squiggles!',
  contentImageUrl: 'https://example.com/monster-pic-12345.png',
  contentMetadata: {
    'userId': '12345',
    'userName': 'Josh',
    'monsterName': 'Mr. Squiggles'
  }
}).then(function (newBranchUniversalObj) {
  branchUniversalObj = newBranchUniversalObj;
  console.log(newBranchUniversalObj);
});```

This would result in that title/image and picture showing up in the preview. Can you give this a try?

[GerTea]

@aaustin I'm already setting these options. On my Android 6 phone all works perfectly fine. Just the old Andorid (4.4.4) doesn't. Haven't tried 5 yet. Allthough @itbeyond said 5+ should work.

[aaustin]

We have a 4X device in the office, so I'll need to wait until tomorrow to check, but can you confirm Facebook is all up to date on that device? Might be a FB bug.

[GerTea]

@aaustin yes, Facebook is up to date

[itbeyond]

@aaustin this is the very same issue - works fine on Android 5+ and IOS just Android 4.X is the problem. As @Floppy1009 states all settings correct and I use the exact same code on these different platforms. The problem is 4.X

[GerTea]

@aaustin any updates? Anything I can help you with?
@itbeyond Have you found a way to get it working?

[aaustin]

Apologies @Floppy1009 - This fell off my radar. On it today. Will update soon.

[aaustin]

Alright, I just tested our latest native Android SDK with the share sheet on Facebook on a Nexus running 4.2.2 and it appears to work. Here's the screenshot I took:

So, there appears to be some interaction between the Cordova built version and Facebook on 4X. I'm looking through the code to determine if I see any discrepancy.

[aaustin]

Whoa! I found the issue and it's crazy, but it appears to be a bug on Facebook's side. Basically, the code to share something inside Cordova is exactly the same as Android, so I started testing other variables.

What I've found is that it* works* for our old apps, where the default domain was bnc.lt but it doesn't work for new apps, where the default domain is app.link. Since Facebook strips out all text that's added to the share, but keeps the URL, my hypothesis is that there's some code path in the Facebook app that is not detecting the app.link domain as a link and stripping it out as if it were text. This same code path doesn't seem to exist for Android 5 and 6.

I'll file a bug with the Facebook team for details on how to reproduce, but in the short term, you can buy a custom domain and white label your Branch links with it. Once you configure this in our dash, it should automatically start working without needing to deploy an update. https://dev.branch.io/getting-started/link-domain-subdomain/guide/#setting-a-custom-link-domain Note that you'll need to add the new domain to your entitlements to get Universal Links working on iOS. https://dev.branch.io/getting-started/universal-app-links/guide/cordova/#add-the-associated-domains-entitlement-to-your-project

[aaustin]

I believe it may actually be an Android issue: https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=66032#c7 Where the new domains were not treated by links until 5... This is a big disappointment...

[aaustin]

Unfortunately, this doesn't appear to be a Branch SDK issue, but appears to be an issue with the app.link domain and Android 4X devices. The resolution is to use a custom domain with your Branch links as described above if you believe 4X to be a core part of your user base.

Apologies for the inconvenience. We definitely didn't anticipate this when we migrated to app.link.

[perrosnk]

Has anyone found any other solution apart from not using app.link?

[ethanneff]

@perrosnk, Unfortunately, this issue has not come up in over a year - so no additional workaround has been investigated.

The good news is we try to make the switch from an app.link domain to a custom link domain as easy as possible (docs). Your old app.link link will still work (except for the edge case in this thread), and your new custom link domain links will be the links generated from your app going forward.

Hope this helps!