Start whatsapp from webview

Question

I have an app that loads a newspaper site in a webview. In that site you can share a news in facebook, twitter and whatsapp. I have facebook's and twitter's links covered with

shouldOverrideUrlLoading()

I can't figer out how to launch the whatsapp app. It uses a custom URL scheme:

whatsapp://send?text=

I get: the webpage at whatsapp://send?text= could not be loaded because:

net::ERR_UNKNOWN_URL_SCHEME

This may help you: [Cordova Share via WhatsApp from a click inside WebView](http://stackoverflow.com/a/31880492/3110234) — activesince93, Nov 10 '15 at 12:56

score 4 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 12 '20 at 11:47

 webView.setWebViewClient(new WebViewClient() {
        public boolean shouldOverrideUrlLoading(WebView view, String url) {
            if(url.startsWith("tel:") || url.contains("https://wa.me/")) {
                Intent intent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW);
                intent.setData(Uri.parse(url));
                startActivity(intent);
                return true;
            }
            return false;
        }
    });

score 1 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:19

1

I suggest using loop from this question: using Intent.ACTION would give You best results.

edited May 23 '17 at 12:19

Community

1
1

answered Nov 10 '15 at 13:06

Opos

36
3

score 1 · Answer 3 · edited Jun 20 '20 at 09:12

Don't use wa.me as a domain for sharing texts on whatsapp. Just test this URL here yourself: http://wa.me/?text=mytest. I see:

ERROR

PAGE NOT FOUND

Don't use the wa.me domain. Use the api.whatsapp.com domain. wa.me requires that you use a phone number. Well, typically, you want the share URL to be shared to other people that the user knows, so, you'd want to leave that blank. Check it out...

https://api.whatsapp.com/send?text=YourShareTextHere

https://api.whatsapp.com/send?text=YourShareTextHere&phone=123

Works for me! Hope this helps someone out there!

If you are interested in watching a project that keeps track of these URLs, then check us out!: https://github.com/bradvin/social-share-urls#whatsapp

score 0 · Answer 4 · edited Nov 10 '15 at 14:20

0

be sure to have a proper URL encoded string after text=

edited Nov 10 '15 at 14:20

Niki van Stein

10,564
3
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answered Nov 10 '15 at 13:08

Farib Khojaste

85
8

Juan · Answer 5 · 2019-02-14T12:37:21.077

I've just found that it is possible to open a conversation to a number Using Click to Chat

To create your own link with a pre-filled message that will automatically appear in the text field of a chat, use https://wa.me/whatsappphonenumber/?text=urlencodedtext where whatsappphonenumber is a full phone number in international format and URL-encodedtext is the URL-encoded pre-filled message.

Example:https://wa.me/15551234567?text=I'm%20interested%20in%20your%20car%20for%20sale

NOTE: It opens WhastApp application if you click the link using a mobile phone browser (at least from Android)

score 0 · Answer 6 · answered Dec 02 '19 at 23:34

this.webView.setWebViewClient(new WebViewClient(){
        @Override
        public boolean  shouldOverrideUrlLoading(WebView view, String url) {
            if (url != null && url.startsWith("https://wa.me")) {
                view.getContext().startActivity(
                        new Intent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW, Uri.parse(url.replace("+",""))));

                return true;

            } else {
                return false;
            }
        }
    });

Start whatsapp from webview

6 Answers6