My app features content that (for text formatting reasons) is presented in an UIWebView. Within the content there are links, some of which should open their target in mobile Safari, while others should navigate within the content.
So far, I've catched the link requests using a UIWebView delegate. In my implementation of
-(BOOL)webView:(UIWebView *)webView shouldStartLoadWithRequest:(NSURLRequest *)request navigationType:(UIWebViewNavigationType)navigationType
I'd check the requests URL using lastPathComponent or pathComponents for known elements to determine whether to open the link externally or within the view.
However, I just found out said methods are only available since iOS 4.0, which would render the app useless on iPad. Plus I have the feeling I'm using a dirty solution here.
Is there another way to somehow "mark" the links within my content in a way that makes them easy to distinguish later, when processing the request in the delegate method?
Thanks alot!!
You could covert the URL request into a string, and do a compare for a subdirectory on your website, such as in URLs that only start with "http://www.sample.com/myapp/myappswebcontent/", against the initial substring of your URL. Anything else, send to Safari.
You should set a policy delegate of web view:
For instance in the controller, that contains a web view
[webView setPolicyDelegate:self];
and then override a decidePolicyForNavigation method (this is just an example):
- (void)webView:(WebView *)sender decidePolicyForNavigationAction: (NSDictionary *)actionInformation request:(NSURLRequest *)request frame:(WebFrame *)frame decisionListener:(id <WebPolicyDecisionListener>)listener
{
if ([[actionInformation objectForKey:WebActionNavigationTypeKey] intValue] == WebNavigationTypeLinkClicked) {
[listener ignore];
[[NSWorkspace sharedWorkspace] openURL:[request URL]];
}
else
[listener use];
}
you can distinguish there kind of link and ignore or use the listener. If you ignore it, you can open the link in safari, if you use it, the link will open in your webview.
HTH
Related
Is there a way to get a callback to objective-c when a certain event has been detected in a UIWebView? Can Javascript send a callback to Objective-C?
Update - don't use UIWebView anymore. Use WKWebView, or better yet (if it fits your needs and you're building for iOS 9), a Safari View Controller.
But if you must use UIWebView, in your UIWebView delegate, provide an implementation for webView:shouldStartLoadWithRequest:navigationType:
In your HTML or Javascript files, add functions that send URLs to a custom scheme (for readability purposes, the custom scheme isn't required). All the URLs sent will be passed to your Objective-C method implementation, and then you can do what you'd like.
Just to illustrate the solution by "bpapa" with actual code:
WARNING: untested code
Implement this method in the UIWebView's delegate...
-(BOOL) webView:(UIWebView *)inWeb shouldStartLoadWithRequest:(NSURLRequest *)inRequest navigationType:(UIWebViewNavigationType)inType {
if ( [[[inRequest URL] scheme] isEqualToString:#"callback"] ) {
// Do something interesting...
return NO;
}
return YES;
}
...then put a link in the webwieb like this:
Click me
And it should activate your callback-code. Obviously, you could trigger it with a javascript instead of a plain link.
I am handling a UIWebView so that i can control which URLs should be loaded within or not, but some how even though it is retuning the NO , it still load the page. Although documentation clearly says that if you return NO, the UIWebView wont load the page.
When i debug,i can see it is returning NO but still UIWebView does load the URL.
- (BOOL)webView:(UIWebView *)webView shouldStartLoadWithRequest:(NSURLRequest *)request navigationType:(UIWebViewNavigationType)navigationType {
NSLog(#"%#", [[request URL] absoluteString]);
NSString *fullURL = [[request URL] absoluteString];
NSRange range = [fullURL rangeOfString:#"#"];
if (range.length != 0) {
NSLog(#"We need to show the other view");
return NO;
}
return YES;
}
I solved the issue, documenting here so it may help someone else. Actually, the HTML, which we were loading using some javascript which was causing this issue. I found out by just using few plain html and testing with them. Once , we know the HTML is issue, we fixed the html and its working now.
Set a breakpoint or NSLog right before the return YES part. Maybe your method gets called twice for whatever reason, and it returns NO on one, and YES on the other.
First, make sure that you are setting the delegate in viewDidLoad with
webView.delegate = self;
(take care of not setting it 2 times, in a xib file and in viewDidLoad, it has caused me problems before)
Make sure you implement the UIWebViewDelegate in your class, something like this:
#interface RootViewController : UIViewController<UIwebViewDelegate>
Assuming you have taken care of all this and still you face problems. Also since you debugged and are SURE that the delegate method is returning NO. One reason I can think of as to why this is happening is that you are not loading a new page but using something like AJAX.
I tested the following code on 2 kinds of pages:
- (BOOL)webView:(UIWebView *)webView shouldStartLoadWithRequest:(NSURLRequest *)request navigationType:(UIWebViewNavigationType)navigationType
{
NSLog(#"THE loadCount is %d", self.loadCount);
if (self.loadCount > 1){
return NO;
}
self.loadCount++;
return YES;
}
Case 1: A webpage where every URL loads a new page. The above code works in this case, and I cannot load any pages after the first load, as required.
Case 2: A webpage in which the first load is a complete new web page. But everything else is loaded with AJAX, in that case, my loadCount does not increase and the pages load fine.
That's all I can think of with the data provided. :)
Same issue here, just to extend the answer above be careful when using rails 4 as backend because turbolinks add javascript to every link and then you can get wrong behavior on your delegate, happened to me returning NO on shouldStartLoadWithRequest and still see the request on my server.
I am trying to build a simple app that uploads images to my site. I am using this tutorial:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQXaJO36I7Y
What I want to do instead of using a button from the app's interface I wan to use a button within a website in a webview. So I want a button to call the opening of the photo album to select a image to upload.
Basically I need a way for a javascript function to call a action in the app itself.
How can I do this?
You could just use a custom link, which you can then detect in the UIWebViewDelegate method.
- (BOOL) webView:(UIWebView *)webView shouldStartLoadWithRequest:(NSURLRequest *)request
navigationType:(UIWebViewNavigationType)navigationType {
if (navigationType == UIWebViewNavigationTypeLinkClicked) {
NSString *rawURL = [[request URL] absoluteString];
if([rawURL isEqualToString:#"callImageLib://"]) {
[self methodeForImageLib];
}
return NO;
}
return YES;
}
If i understand it correctly you need to communicate iPHone Web application to call native iPhone application and visa versa. please check the following links.
http://blog.techno-barje.fr/post/2010/10/06/UIWebView-secrets-part3-How-to-properly-call-ObjectiveC-from-Javascript
http://iphoneincubator.com/blog/windows-views/how-to-inject-javascript-functions-into-a-uiwebview
hope these 2 link help to solve your issue.
I've designed my main view using HTML, CSS and some images. It looks very nice. I'm using some images that are clickable in HTML code.
On click of some image, I want to load some view accordingly.
Is it possible? If yes, please suggest me how to do it.
If tutorial or some sample code is available please share it.
Implement the following UIWebView Delegate Method and call your Objective methods
(BOOL)webView:(UIWebView *)webView shouldStartLoadWithRequest:(NSURLRequest *)request navigationType:(UIWebViewNavigationType)navigationType {
if (navigationType == UIWebViewNavigationTypeLinkClicked) {
NSLog(#"LINK CLICKED......");
//return NO;
}
return YES;
}
You can look into PhoneGap for some sample code.
There are two parts. First you define a custom scheme for you application that is only used to communicate between the web page and the delegate. Could just be 'foo:' as it will be private to the page and host. You then handle this custom scheme in the delegate shouldStartLoadWithRequest method and return NO.
With a clickable link, you can just set the href to something that starts with your custom scheme. If you need to send messages at arbitrary times, you can use javascript to set the window.location to a url with your custom scheme.
I am designing an app which will present large amounts of text that is interspersed with notes and references as clickable images. On a PC I'd use a control that shows HTML, but in the iPhone I am not able to intercept the touches of images and links too well using the UIWeb control.
Should I use a UIScroll and build the text as lables and UIImages perhaps?
Looking for the best way forward in my design phase.
I don't know what your requirements are obviously, but it is possible to capture the click on an link in a UIWebView and take some alternative action. In one of my Apps, I have a UIWebView with one particular link which I want to route differently, while I let all other links open as web pages in the UIWebView as normal. Here's the code snippet from the app which accomplishes this. It is within a UIViewController which loads the UIWebView:
- (BOOL)webView:(UIWebView *)webView
shouldStartLoadWithRequest:(NSURLRequest *)request
navigationType:(UIWebViewNavigationType)navigationType {
NSURL *url = [ request URL ];
if( [[url path] isEqualToString:#"/the_special_link.html"] ) {
// Take some alternative action and then stop the page from loading...
// (code to take some special action goes here)
return NO;
}
else {
return YES;
}
}
This is a delegate method call, so when I set up the UIWebView, which I do programmatically in the Controller loadView method, I set the WebView's delegate to that same Controller:
myWebView.delegate = self;