Stacker URL Structure

Stacker lets you build what I call “URL-driven iOS apps”. That is: you drive your iOS application’s navigation, page headings etc all through how you declare your urls.

An example URL that will stack a new page and set the title to ‘Profile’ will look like: /profile?x_push_page=true&x_page_title=Profile.

Parameter	Description
`x_push_page`	stacks the page on top of the current page
`x_replace_page`	replaces the current page with the url
`x_pop_page`	goes back to the previous page
`x_pop_page_and_refresh`	goes back to the previous page and refreshes it
`x_pop_page_and_replace`	goes back to the previous page but replaces it with the url
`x_clear_stack`	goes back to the first page
`x_clear_stack_and_refresh`	goes back to the first page and refreshes it
`x_clear_stack_and_replace`	goes back to the first page but replaces it with the url
`x_external_page`	opens the page in a separate modal view

These parameters are for custom titles, buttons and actions:

Parameter	Description
`x_page_title=My+Profile`	sets the page’s title to “My Profile”
`x_right_button=myButton`	shows a custom right-hand navigation button (see: custom button handlers)
`x_left_button=myButton`	shows a custom left-hand navigation button (see: custom button handlers)
`x_action=myAction`	will invoke your own custom method (see: custom url actions)

Stacking a new page

If you want to load a new webpage and have it ‘stack’ (pushed) on top of your current page then you need to specify x_push_page=true and set the page title you wish to have displayed in the native iOS header like so x_page_title=MyPageTitle. If a page title has multiple words, then use + to seperate the words: x_page_title=My+Profile

myapp.com/profile/2?x_new_page=true&
                    x_page_title=My+Newsfeed

Open an external website

Navigating to a URL that’s external to your application should most likely be opened up in a separate browser. To open a link in a browser view just add the x_external_page=true parameter to the URL.

news.ca/some/article?x_external_page=true

Stacker will automatically strips out the custom parameter to make sure that the intended URL structure is preserved when viewing the web page:

news.ca/some/article?1230-breaking-news-this-morning&?mobile=1&x_external_page=true

will open:

news.ca/some/article?1230-breaking-news-this-morning&?mobile=1

Popping back one page

You can go back one page by specifying x_pop_page=true.

/profile?x_pop_page=true

Sometimes you may post something to a server and want the page to go back and refresh to show the new content you created. You can redirect the page to a URL that includes x_pop_page_and_refresh=true and this cause Stacker to go back one page and refresh that page to reveal any changes. You can also replace the page with x_pop_page_and_replace=true.

This will go back one page, replace the page with /newsfeed and change the title to News Feed in the navigation bar:

/newsfeed?x_pop_page_and_replace=true&x_page_title="News+Feed"

If you’ve registered a button with Stacker in your iOS app then you can show that button by calling it in the URL like so:

/profile?x_page_title=Profile&x_right_button=myNavButton

This will show a button that you’ve registered called myNavButton. Read about registering and using buttons.

Triggering a custom action

You can execute Objective-C functions by calling a URL that looks like this:

inapp://capture?x_action=myAction

This will execute the action you’ve registered with Stacker called myAction. Read about registering custom actions.