PhoneGap/iOS, open ChildBrowser from .shouldStartLoadWithRequest()? - iphone

Question

I'm packaging a mobile website (over the network) in PhoneGap and would like to intercept links pointing to PDF's and open them using the ChildBrowser plugin. Is it 1: possible to trigger ChildBrowserfrom native code (I've already determined which links to intercept) and 2: is AppDelegate.m, .shouldStartLoadWithRequest() the right place to do it? And in that case: 3: how to correctly call ChildBrowser from native code?
I've tried this admittedly naive approach:
return [self exec:#"ChildBrowserCommand.showWebPage",
[url absoluteString]];
but it only resulted in an error along the lines of ...'NSInvalidArgumentException', reason: '-[AppDelegate exec:]: unrecognized selector sent to instance.
(PS: I'm aware this approach isn't ideal practice, but this project is only priced for 2 days work)

Answer 1

If you added (Child Browser) plugin classes in plugin folder then you have to play with the appDelegate.m file, #import "ChildBrowserViewController.h"
For example your html file has following html/javascript code, like this
window.location="http://xyz.com/magazines/magazines101.pdf";
To execute this url in Child Browser, you need to modify native shouldStartLoadWithRequest: method for request url which contain pdf extension files.
/**
* Start Loading Request
* This is where most of the magic happens... We take the request(s) and process the response.
* From here we can re direct links and other protocalls to different internal methods.
*/
- (BOOL)webView:(UIWebView *)theWebView shouldStartLoadWithRequest:(NSURLRequest *)request navigationType:(UIWebViewNavigationType)navigationType
{
//return [ super webView:theWebView shouldStartLoadWithRequest:request navigationType:navigationType ];
NSURL *url = [request URL];
if([request.URL.absoluteString isEqualToString:#"about:blank"])
return [ super webView:theWebView shouldStartLoadWithRequest:request
navigationType:navigationType ];
if ([[url scheme] isEqualToString:#"gap"]) {
return [ super webView:theWebView shouldStartLoadWithRequest:request
navigationType:navigationType ];
} else {
NSString *urlFormat = [[[url path] componentsSeparatedByString:#"."] lastObject];
if ([urlFormat compare:#"pdf"] == NSOrderedSame) {
[theWebView sizeToFit];
//This code will open pdf extension files (url's) in Child Browser
ChildBrowserViewController* childBrowser = [ [ ChildBrowserViewController alloc ] initWithScale:FALSE ];
childBrowser.modalPresentationStyle = UIModalPresentationFormSheet;
childBrowser.modalTransitionStyle = UIModalTransitionStyleFlipHorizontal;
[super.viewController presentModalViewController:childBrowser animated:YES ];
NSString* urlString=[NSString stringWithFormat:#"%#",[url absoluteString]];
[childBrowser loadURL:urlString];
[childBrowser release];
return NO;
}
else
return [ super webView:theWebView shouldStartLoadWithRequest:request
navigationType:navigationType ];
}
}
thanks,
Mayur

Answer 2

Anyone looking for android equivalent, put below code inside shouldOverrideUrlLoading
ChildBrowser childBrowser = new ChildBrowser();
childBrowser.cordova = this;
childBrowser.showWebPage(url, null);