I thought it was something clever, but it shows as URL in QR Scanner, not an APP, which opens browser after activating it, then user would have to confirm redirect to App Store on empty page
TL;DR: it is HTTP redirect based on User-Agent header
I agree with the other commenters that this is a pretty simple engineering problem, but I still enjoyed reading about edge cases the author worked to address (they could have taken the easy road with this but tried not to). I forgot that Safari on iPad doesn't specify iPad in user agent headers
Is this a whole blog post for a simple backend that just routes based on the User-Agent?
Believe it or not there are entire companies that are (to simplify, of course) just that: https://www.adjust.com/
Yep, that's what it is.
I thought it was something clever, but it shows as URL in QR Scanner, not an APP, which opens browser after activating it, then user would have to confirm redirect to App Store on empty page
TL;DR: it is HTTP redirect based on User-Agent header
it's just a server side redirect based on the user agent headers
Err wut... redirecting based on user agents?
I hate QR codes. I don't trust them.
For our apps Slyp and SlypBusiness, we had the same QR code for each app open Playstore/Appstore page of the app depending on the phone.
Just have a branded link to the official web page and have the js in that page open the original Playstore/Appstore page.
I agree with the other commenters that this is a pretty simple engineering problem, but I still enjoyed reading about edge cases the author worked to address (they could have taken the easy road with this but tried not to). I forgot that Safari on iPad doesn't specify iPad in user agent headers