IOS - How to avoid keyboard from hiding when uiwebview reloads - iphone

Question

I have a webview that loads a web chat client.
As every chat, the page has a textfield to input text.
The problem is that when the user opens the keyboard it is automatically hidden after a short time due to several ajax requests that are reloading the page. This becomes really annoying for the user as he or she can't input a complete sentence before the keyboard hides.
I don't know why, this only happens in iPhone 4S and iPhone 5. In iPhone 4, 3GS, and Simulator everything works ok.
I have tried to use shouldStartLoadWithRequest to catch the request and load it after the user hides the keyboard, but this ruins the chat session.
I tried to "hang" the request with a Thread sleep in the same method, but it happens in the Main Thread so it freezes the entire application.
Is there a way I can simply avoid the keyboard from hiding?

Answer 1

So after a long research I found a way to do it, its not the best but it helped me a lot.
First use DOM to check if the webView firstResonder
- (BOOL)isWebViewFirstResponder
{
NSString *str = [self.webView stringByEvaluatingJavaScriptFromString:#"document.activeElement.tagName"];
if([[str lowercaseString]isEqualToString:#"input"]) {
return YES;
}
return NO;
}
Then respond to UIWebViewDelegate method shouldStartLoadWithRequest, and return NO if UIWebView is first responder
- (BOOL)webView:(UIWebView *)webView shouldStartLoadWithRequest:(NSURLRequest *)request navigationType:(UIWebViewNavigationType)navigationType
{
if([self isWebViewFirstResponder] &&
navigationType != UIWebViewNavigationTypeFormSubmitted) {
return NO;
} else {
return YES;
}
}

Answer 2

You can use Notification center inside your DidLoad method to listen when the keyboard will hide like this:
[[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] addObserver:self
selector:#selector(keyboardWillHide)
name:UIKeyboardWillHideNotification
object:nil];
- (void) keyboardWillHide{
[webView becomeFirstResponder];
}
which will make the web view first responder and show the keyboard again. I haven't tried it myself so hopefully it will do the trick..

Answer 3

if your text field is on UIView
You can use web view Delegate method
-(void)webViewDidFinishLoad:(UIWebView *)webView
{
[textField becomeFirstResponder];
}
-(void)webView:(UIWebView *)webView didFailLoadWithError:(NSError *)error
{
[textField becomeFirstResponder];
}
otherwise if textField is on UIWebView then replace textField with webView as shown below.
-(void)webViewDidFinishLoad:(UIWebView *)webView
{
[webView becomeFirstResponder];
}
-(void)webView:(UIWebView *)webView didFailLoadWithError:(NSError *)error
{
[webView becomeFirstResponder];
}