Open link in browser inside iOS app with web techniques

Question

Let's assume someone is running a web app directly inside a simple iOS app with UIWebView. It it possible to open a external website link inside the browser (Safari Mobile) with web techniques like JavaScript? If yes, how could it be done?

No possibility due many different websites should be able to be load and most websites block inlining into an iframe. — David, Dec 05 '13 at 21:57

score 2 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:44

To open a URL programmatically:

[[UIApplication sharedApplication] openURL:[NSURL URLWithString: @"http://www.google.com"];

As far as your WebView, you can use your WebViewDelegate to catch and inspect any hyperlinks the user selects. For example:

- (BOOL)webView:(UIWebView *)webView shouldStartLoadWithRequest:(NSURLRequest *)request navigationType:(UIWebViewNavigationType)navigationType
{
    NSURL *urlPath = [request URL];
    if (navigationType == UIWebViewNavigationTypeLinkClicked)
    {
        if ([[urlPath scheme] hasPrefix:@"http"]))
        {
            [[UIApplication sharedApplication] openURL:urlPath];
            return (NO);
        }

    }

    return (YES);
}

This should open any hyperlink click in browser app.

You can also create a custom protocol, see Android / iOS - Custom URI / Protocol Handling, and catch those in this same delegate handler by checking the [url scheme] property. This will allow you to explicitly do something with javascript.

Open link in browser inside iOS app with web techniques

1 Answers1