Is there any way to have WebView auto-link URLs and phone numbers in Android?

Question

If a page has a URL or a phone number on it that isn't a link is there any way to have WebView recognize it and automatically turn it into a link like you can with TextViews?

With a TextView you would simply set the android:autoLink to the desired settings:

<TextView
    android:autoLink="web|phone"
    ... />

but I can't find any equivalent for WebView.

score 35 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 02 '11 at 07:49

35

If you are loading your own (web) content from a String, then you can do something like this:

final String content = "My email is: firstname@email.com ...";
Spannable sp = new SpannableString(content);
Linkify.addLinks(sp, Linkify.ALL);
final String html = "<body>" + Html.toHtml(sp) + "</body>";
myWebView.loadData(html, "text/html", "utf-8");

answered Mar 02 '11 at 07:49

Harri

828
10
13

13

Note that if the content string already contains HTML, you'll want to use `Spannable sp = new SpannableString( Html.fromHtml(content) )` so that your characters aren't entity-ized in `Html.toHtml(sp)`. – dvs Aug 16 '12 at 15:31
is it works for Lollipop version? I am running my app on both Lollipop and Kitkat but getting problem on Lollipop device? – Prashanth Debbadwar Jul 27 '15 at 10:41
1

This works but the problem with formatting. If content has tags that are not supported(e.g.
) by webview.

Hiren Dabhi

Oct 20 '16 at 10:16

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 16 '09 at 19:07

2

I don't know about any way which would make this work just by changing a setting, but a workaround would be to wait until the web page finishes loading and then do:

yourWebView.loadUrl("javascript:(function(){ /* code that creates links */ })()");

This will inject javaScript into the already loaded web page. There's a slightly longer example available here: http://lexandera.com/2009/01/injecting-javascript-into-a-webview/.

You can find the JavaScript source for creating links if you take a look at the source of Linkify script for Greasemonkey (it's a plugin for Firefox in case you're not familiar with it). I believe it comes with the default install.

answered Nov 16 '09 at 19:07

Aleksander Kmetec

3,287
2
24
19

Ha... that is exactly the route I was planning (including using Linkify as an example) to take if there wasn't a built in way to do this. Thanks! – Jeremy Logan Nov 16 '09 at 19:20
Doesn't the Browser have auto-detection for phone numbers and addresses, though? There's got to be a simpler way. I just don't know it. – Eric Mill Nov 16 '09 at 22:29
It does have some sort of address (and possible phone number) detection, yes. But from my experience it's not very reliable (last time I tested it it only recognized US addresses) and it also doesn't highlight what it detects. – Aleksander Kmetec Nov 16 '09 at 22:43
The Linkify greasemonkey script didn't end up working because (apparently) WebView doesn't have XPath. I ended up digging up a bookmarklet that used DOM and (after modification) it worked fine. – Jeremy Logan Nov 17 '09 at 04:13

Is there any way to have WebView auto-link URLs and phone numbers in Android?

2 Answers2

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