protocol_handlers

Limited availability

This feature is not Baseline because it does not work in some of the most widely-used browsers.

Experimental: This is an experimental technology
Check the Browser compatibility table carefully before using this in production.

The protocol_handlers member specifies an array of objects that are protocols which this web app can register and handle. Protocol handlers register the application in an OS's application preferences; the registration associates a specific application with the given protocol scheme. For example, when using the protocol handler mailto:// on a web page, registered email applications open.

After registering a web app as a protocol handler, when a user clicks on a hyperlink with a specific scheme such as mailto:// or web+music:// from a browser or native app, the registered PWA would open and receive the URL.

Values

Protocol handlers objects may contain the following values:

protocol Experimental: A required string containing the protocol to be handled; e.g.: mailto, ms-word, web+jngl.
url Experimental: Required HTTPS URL within the application scope that will handle the protocol. The %s token will be replaced by the URL starting with the protocol handler's scheme. If url is a relative URL, the base URL will be the URL of the manifest.

Examples

In this example, a web app manifest declares that the app should be registered to handle the protocols web+jngl and web+jnglstore.

json

"protocol_handlers": [
  {
    "protocol": "web+jngl",
    "url": "/lookup?type=%s"
  },
  {
    "protocol": "web+jnglstore",
    "url": "/shop?for=%s"
  }
]

A developer can add a field in the manifest.json to declare which protocols the web app can handle. As seen in the example above, the key is named protocol_handlers and it contains an array of protocol handler declaration objects.

Registering applications to handle URL schemes is operating-system dependent. This association is usually done during application install but it can also be done afterwards from an app that has already been installed.

Specifications

Specification
Manifest Incubations # protocol_handlers-member

Browser compatibility

BCD tables only load in the browser