react-native-navigation/docs/deep-links.md

Deep Links

Deep links are strings which represent internal app paths/routes. They commonly appear on push notification payloads to control which section of the app should be displayed when the notification is clicked. For example, in a chat app, clicking on the notification should open the relevant conversation on the “chats” tab.

Another use-case for deep links is when one screen wants to control what happens in another sibling screen. Normally, a screen can only push/pop from its own stack, it cannot access the navigation stack of a sibling tab for example. Returning to our chat app example, assume that by clicking on a contact in the “contacts” tab we want to open the relevant conversation in the “chats” tab. Since the tabs are siblings, you can achieve this behavior by triggering a deep link:

onContactSelected(contactID) {
  this.props.navigator.handleDeepLink({
    link: 'chats/' + contactID,
    payload: '' // (optional) Extra payload with deep link
  });
}

Tip: Deep links are also the recommended way to handle side drawer actions. Since the side drawer screen is a sibling to the rest of the app, it can control the other screens by triggering deep links.

Handling deep links

Every deep link event is broadcasted to all screens. A screen can listen to these events by defining a handler using setOnNavigatorEvent (much like listening for button events). Using this handler, the screen can filter links directed to it by parsing the link string and act upon any relevant links found.

export default class SecondTabScreen extends Component {
  constructor(props) {
    super(props);
    // if you want to listen on navigator events, set this up
    this.props.navigator.setOnNavigatorEvent(this.onNavigatorEvent.bind(this));
  }
  onNavigatorEvent(event) {
    // handle a deep link
    if (event.type == 'DeepLink') {
      const parts = event.link.split('/'); // Link parts
      const payload = event.payload; // (optional) The payload

      if (parts[0] == 'tab2') {
        // handle the link somehow, usually run a this.props.navigator command
      }
    }
  }

Deep link string format

There is no specification for the format of deep links. Since you’re implementing the parsing logic in your handlers, you can use any format you wish.