FamilySEarch Messaging with url-links
The messaging feature of FamilySearch is a nice thing :-) ( Chats)
< not to be confused with the messaging in Community - which I am not referring to >
However I notice that when I send a message - and include a url link
if the recipient tries to open the message using the Family Tree (PHONE) app
that they can not open the link.
BUT if they use their browser on their phone to access FamilySearch they can get to the link
or if they use a computer they can get to the link.
is this a known bug?
why cant messages read in Family tree phone app not link to URL's in the chat messages???
Answers
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I failed Phone, but this sounds entirely reasonable to me: the app isn't a web browser. It doesn't know how to go to websites.
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it surely can - if it is programmed to . . . just like anything else.
It can open a browser window.actually it does open a browser window - just doesnt find the file . . .
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The Chat feature on the Family Tree apps does indeed allow some URLs to be clicked, so the broad premise of the question "why cant messages read in Family tree phone app not link to URL's in the chat messages???" is not correct.
However, the Chat feature of FamilySearch does not allow all URLs. If I put "https://google.com" in a chat, it will remain just regular text (not a clickable link) because Google is not on the list of allowed URLs. That is true on both the website in a browser or in the iOS or Android Family Tree app. But if I put "https://familysearch.org" in a chat, it will be a clickable link. That works on the website or the Android or iOS Tree app. In the apps, it will open the URL in a browser.
If you are experiencing something different from this, then I would double check the details:
- Are you looking at the exact same chat with the same URL in the app and on the website?
- Is the recipient using an up-to-date version of the app?
- If you are looking at the same URL in the same chat message, is there something about the URL that is unusual? Perhaps the app and website don't handle certain aspects of a URL (such as a parameter or fragment) exactly the same way.
- In your last post, you said "actually it does open a browser window - just doesnt find the file . . .". You said "file" and not "webpage" — does this URL point to a normal webpage, or to a file that is downloaded when you access that URL? Perhaps that's a difference.
If you're willing to share the exact URL that is causing problems for you, then perhaps I could figure out why it acts differently on the app from the website. And it would also be helpful to note which app version on which platform (iOS vs Android) you are using.
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I understand what you mean that some links - dont create true hyperlinks
it appears that any link within familysearch - creates a hyperlink - but anything external does not.
BUT in my case on my phone (usin the app) - the message did create a true hyperlink, and it was clickable - simply that it did not actually find the web page - but when using a computer it did.
This was first reported to me by another person who had recieved a message from me with a familysearch link - and then I tried it myself and also got the same result.
Also - if I use the browser on my cell phone and go thru familysearch.org (instead of the app) it also works just fine. Its the FamilyTree App that doesnt work.
when I said "file" I meant webpage. . . . but a web page is a type of file.
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@Family Bible said "it appears that any link within familysearch - creates a hyperlink - but anything external does not."
That's not the case. There are definitely many URLs that are not within FamilySearch.org that also create hyperlinks. One example is https://goldiemay.com — that definitely works. I also tried https://thefhguide.com/goal-tiles-fs.html and that worked as well.
Is there some reason you haven't shared the actual URL? It's very helpful to have specifics if we want to move towards improving the situation.
One possibility is that what you are experiencing has to do with the deep linking capability of the app, which would have nothing to do with the Chat feature itself, but with no specifics, that's just speculation on my part.
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the url is not the issue . . .
the issue is that when you use the FamilyTree app - you cant open a link that is sent to you via the messenger system.
it detects the link, it knows it a link to open with a browser window - but it doesnt actually open the page.
You can easily try this yourself - - have someone send you a message with a familysearch link - and see if you can open it using the Familytree app - reading your messages.
note again this is not the community messaging system - but the core familysearch.org system messages.0 -
Hey Alan - I just sent you a message with a link in Familytree - using your phone and the FamilyTree App - see if you can access the message and then navigate to the hyperlink page
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yeh - those links do generate actual hyperlinks. example:
https://goldiemay.com
I think FamilySearch keeps a list of "safe" domains
Familysearch links always create hyerlinks - - but most NON familysearch links usually dont create hyperlinks - but a few like you cite do.
But this really has nothing to do with my point - that urls' in messaging cant be opened in the FamilyTree phone app - at least the ones I have tried.0 -
deep linking????
if the fully qualified link I put in a message or email can be opened on a computer with no special logic
then I should be able to do the same in FamilyTree App.
special "deep linking" technology is not needed to get to a basic - fully qualified url that someone shares in a message.1 -
Thank you for sending that URL. With that, I was able to figure out what the issue was. Until I had that detail, I was unable to duplicate the problem, since some URLs work fine and others don't.
First of all, I'm pretty sure that you are on an iOS device. I was not able to duplicate this problem on an Android device, but for some URLs on an iOS device, I can now see what you are talking about. Plenty of URLs work fine on an iOS device. I tried https://familysearch.org/memories , https://goldiemay.com , and https://billiongraves.com . All worked fine on both Android and iOS.
But for https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/memories/KJPF-NJQ , the iOS Chat feature mangles the URL, turning it into https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/memories/[KJPF-NJQ](https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/details/KJPF-NJQ) . I have no idea why it would add all those brackets and parentheses and append a related but different URL at the end. But that mangled URL is not a URL that's ever going to work, so you got a 404 error.
I'm sorry I brought up deep linking, since you don't know what that is. Now that you have supplied an actual URL, I can see that deep linking is not an issue for this particular URL, so we'll drop that line of inquiry.
Finally, I would clarify that there is a fairly small list of domains (currently less than 150) that are allowed to be turned into hyperlinks. URLs for any other domains remain plain text and cannot be clicked.
I'll use my contacts on the iOS team at FamilySearch to see if this problem can be fixed soon.
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Thanks - so its only a portion of familysearch url's that dont work then . . .
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Yes, that's correct. I've had no problem with URLs outside of FamilySearch.org, and even on FamilySearch, many simple URLs work fine. I haven't done an exhaustive test, but the problematic ones seem to be the more complex URLs that contain PIDs — unfortunately those are likely to be the most useful ones to share with people as you communicate via Chat.
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Perhaps related: on a computer, the Chat apparently assumes that anything with a hyphen in the middle is a PID. I wrote "Gálfi Péter 1775-1836" in a message, and it tried to turn the dates into a link, which of course went nowhere, as there is no page at https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/1775-1836. I had to add spaces between the numbers and the punctuation in order to stop its overhelpfulness.
(And then there's this interface's extremely insistent super-overhelpfulness…. The convolutions involved in not having the non-link try to turn into a link were …beyond frustrating.)
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@Julia Szent-Györgyi That issue you ran into is not directly related to the topic of this thread, but it's close. A chat message is simply text. But then that text is processed to match two kinds of patterns: the system attempts to see if it includes an allowed URL or a PID; if so, it will turn that text into a hyperlink. The URL matching is the topic of this thread, and you just raised the related topic of matching PIDs.
The problem with the PID checking is that the scheme for PIDs is a bit broader than most people realize. The long-term plan for PIDs includes not only the XXXX-XXX PIDs we are currently using, but XXXX-XXXX PIDs that will be the next series of PIDs when the 7-character PIDs are exhausted. So 1775-1836 actually is a valid PID (valid in the sense of matching the pattern for PIDs, not in the sense that that specific PID has been assigned yet). Since 0 is not a valid character for PIDs, 1775-1804 would not be considered to match the pattern, and so would not be turned into a hyperlink.
The system certainly does not consider "anything with a hyphen in the middle" to be a PID, but unfortunately it is exceedingly common in genealogical practice to refer to a range of 4-digit dates, and that NNNN-NNNN pattern happens to match the PID pattern, as long as there is no 0. The fact that a date range overlaps the PID pattern is certainly unfortunate in this case.
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