What is the purpose of "android-app: //" links, how should they be structured, and how to check them?

Reference Information. There is a lot of information about app indexing, app linking, deep linking, app deep linking, and more - but almost all of them just rephrase the same information, without explaining the purpose of the different parts, using a confusing terminology and it just seems like they were written for non-technical people (SEO and marketing people), not for developers.

Anyway, I am implementing application indexing and deep linking to my application and I thought this was all (mostly) figured out. But then I started thinking about what the goal really is, what are the android-app://

links that I added to my site, and if I actually implemented them correctly or not.

I have an SSL site, call it https://mywebsite.com

and app, call your package name com.my.app

.

So, for example, https://mywebsite.com/foo/bar

I have the following deep app link (is there a correct term?):

<link rel="alternate" href="android-app://com.my.app/http/mywebsite.com/foo/bar" />

      

Question 1 . All examples I've seen have used this format, but since my site is using SSL, shouldn't I use https

instead http

like this?

<link rel="alternate" href="android-app://com.my.app/https/mywebsite.com/foo/bar" />

      

Question 2: Now if I try to open one of these links on my device, it doesn't work. I've tried using QR code readers by typing it in the browser and even sending it as target data using adb. The phone doesn't seem to understand the circuit at all android-app://

. I've seen some places people recommend testing these links with QR codes, but I've tried three different QR apps and none of them work with them. Can I test them, and if so, how?

Question 3: What is the actual purpose of these links? My application is https://mywebsite.com/foo/bar

rendering using an intent filter, so what is the actual purpose of providing a link android-app://com.my.app/http/mywebsite.com/foo/bar

on my web page?

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