flutter_webview_plugin: how to open a link in default browser - flutter

Question

I use flutter_webview_plugin and I would like to open a link; not in my webview, but in the browser of the user. When I use StreamSubscription with String, the app listens only to the url from the app, like when I use FlutterWebViewPlugin().reloadUrl or .launchUrl.

Answer 1

You should be able to use the url_launcher package concurrently with the flutter_webview_plugin to get your desired effect.
Basically with the webview, you can use the parameter invalidUrlRegex in either launch or the WebviewScaffold to setup URLs not allowed to be opened inside your webview.
eg: below blocks any links that dont have the host google or stackoverflow.
invalidUrlRegex: r'^(?!https:\/{2}www\.google\.com|https:\/{2}stackoverflow\.com).*$'
Then have an onStateChanged listener on the webview, this will cause any blocked URLs to result in a WebViewState.abortLoad state.
FlutterWebviewPlugin().onStateChanged.listen(onStateChanged);
onStateChanged(WebViewStateChanged change) {
if (change.type == WebViewState.abortLoad) {
canLaunch(change.url).then((val) => val ? launch(change.url) : null);
}
}
The above will use the url_launcher to launch the URL in the user's preferred browser.
This is by far the best approach that I was able to come up within our application.