Share identity from mobile apps to mobile web/WebViews

When a visitor moves from a mobile app into a WebView or mobile web page, the app and web contexts each maintain their own identity. Without an explicit handoff, the web experience treats the visitor as a new, unknown person, which fragments reporting and restarts personalization.

Mobile-to-web identity sharing solves this by passing the visitor’s Experience Cloud ID (ECID) from the mobile app to the web destination through an adobe_mc query-string parameter. The parameter carries the ECID, your Experience Cloud organization ID, and a timestamp. When the web destination loads with a valid adobe_mc parameter, the Web SDK automatically reads it and applies the handed-off identity on its first Edge Network request, so both contexts share the same visitor.

Use this pattern when your mobile app opens a WebView or mobile web page that your organization controls and you want app activity and web activity to remain tied to the same visitor. If your goal is identity continuity between websites on different domains, use cross-domain sharing instead.

Prerequisites

Before you begin, make sure that your implementation meets the following requirements:

Retrieve identity from the mobile app retrieve-identity

Use the getUrlVariables API from the Identity for Edge Network extension to retrieve the visitor’s identity as a query string. You can then append that string to the URL before opening the WebView or browser.

The returned string contains the following URL-encoded parameters:

The following code examples show what a handoff might look like in your mobile app:

Identity.getUrlVariables { (urlVariables, error) in
    if let error = error {
        // Handle the error
        return
    }

    guard let urlVariables = urlVariables else { return }

    // Construct the full URL by appending the identity query string
    if let url = URL(string: "https://example.com/webapp?\(urlVariables)") {
        // Open the URL in a WebView or browser
        let request = URLRequest(url: url)
        webView.load(request)
    }
}

Identity.getUrlVariables { urlVariables ->
    if (urlVariables != null) {
        // Construct the full URL by appending the identity query string
        val url = "https://example.com/webapp?$urlVariables"

        // Open the URL in a WebView or browser
        webView.loadUrl(url)
    }
}

Receive identity on the web side receive-identity

No additional code is required on the web destination. When the Web SDK is present on the page and the URL contains a valid adobe_mc parameter, the SDK automatically extracts the ECID and applies it to the visitor’s identity map on the first Edge Network request.

If your web destination uses the Web SDK tag extension and you need to redirect the visitor to another page while preserving identity, use the Redirect with identity action to forward the adobe_mc parameter to the next page.