Getting “This page can't be displayed"error while trying to run Sharepoint-Hosted app in SharePoint 2013

Question

I am developing a Sharepoint-hosted App in Visual Studio 2012 on our on-premise Sharepoint. I've successfully been able to deploy and test the app on our dev site, but when I package the app, add it to the app catalog, and install the app on a team site, I get a "This page can't be displayed" error.

What I've noticed that I am not redirected to the generated URL with the '' prefix (like I see on the dev site). I've tried installing a simple packaged app and tried it on our dev site, but received the same "can't be displayed" error.

Why does a sideloaded app deployed via VS2012 work, while a packaged app, uploaded to the app catalog and installed doesn't? And how can I get this to work?

Our environment is Sharepoint 2013 installed on MS Server 2012.

Thank you.

Answer 1

Visual Studio does a lot of work for you when it uploads the application for you. Doing it manually requires more work. Before you deployed your application, did you go to the appregnew.aspx page, and generate the ClientID, etc? If you go to the appprincipals.aspx page, do you see your appprincipal registered, and does the first part of the ID (before the @) match the client ID in your app's manifest file? Finally, when you got the "page can't be displayed", was there a correlation id? If so, try running a powershell script like this: https://habaneroconsulting.com/insights/an-even-better-way-to-get-the-real-sharepoint-error#.VQYsrxt0yUk If not, try searching your SharePoint logs (under the "15" hive) for errors that occurred near the time you tried to access the application. You also might try running "SharePoint Manager 2013", http://spm.codeplex.com/, to confirm that your "App Web" and whatever pages or lists you put in your manifest appear in that tool.