Aladdin: Automating release of android deep links to in-app content

Yun Ma, Xuanzhe Liu, Ziniu Hu, Dian Yang, Gang Huang, Yunxin Liu, Tao Xie

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

Unlike the Web where each web page has a global URL to reach, a specific 'content page' inside a mobile app cannot be opened unless the user explores the app with several operations from the landing page. Recently, deep links have been advocated by major companies to enable targeting and opening a specific page of an app externally with an accessible uniform resource identifier (URI). In this paper, we present an empirical study of deep links over 20,000 Android apps, and find that deep links do not get wide adoption among current Android apps, and non-trivial manual efforts are required for app developers to support deep links. To address such an issue, we propose the Aladdin approach and supporting tool to release deep links to access arbitrary locations of existing apps. We evaluate Aladdin with popular apps and demonstrate its effectiveness and performance.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationProceedings - 2017 IEEE/ACM 39th International Conference on Software Engineering Companion, ICSE-C 2017
PublisherInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
Pages139-140
Number of pages2
ISBN (Electronic)9781538615898
DOIs
StatePublished - Jun 30 2017
Event39th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Software Engineering Companion, ICSE-C 2017 - Buenos Aires, Argentina
Duration: May 20 2017May 28 2017

Publication series

NameProceedings - 2017 IEEE/ACM 39th International Conference on Software Engineering Companion, ICSE-C 2017

Other

Other39th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Software Engineering Companion, ICSE-C 2017
Country/TerritoryArgentina
CityBuenos Aires
Period5/20/175/28/17

Keywords

  • Android apps
  • Deep link
  • Program analysis

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Software
  • Safety, Risk, Reliability and Quality

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