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I have an basic test application. It contains a UIWebView.

The website contains links with target="_blank" and some without it. The problem is that what happens is the opposite, the "_blank" open inside the app, and the others open in Safari.

My View controller contains this:

- (BOOL)webView:(UIWebView *)webView shouldStartLoadWithRequest:(NSURLRequest *)request navigationType:(UIWebViewNavigationType)navigationType {
    if (navigationType == UIWebViewNavigationTypeLinkClicked) {
        [[UIApplication sharedApplication] openURL:request.URL];
        return false;
    }
    return true;
}

How could it be? thanks

  • what is `navigationType` when you click a _blank link? What is request.URL – Lou Franco Mar 01 '16 at 15:09
  • @LouFranco thanks for your comment, but I dont understand your question. could you be more specific please? –  Mar 01 '16 at 15:12
  • In your code, put a break point at the `if` line and look at what the value of `navigationType` is. According to the answer below it will be Other, not LinkClicked. He offered some suggestions on what to do – Lou Franco Mar 01 '16 at 15:25

1 Answers1

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You've implemented this behavior yourself. When you receive UIWebViewNavigationTypeLinkClicked, it means that ANY link is clicked, not only links with target="_blank". For this case you invoke -[UIApplication openURL:], so, you open any links in Safari.

When target is "_blank", you will receive the same delegate method with UIWebViewNavigationTypeOther. For this case, you return true, so link is opened in web view. Problem here, that there is no easy way to differ this case from many "other" cases. UIWebView API is far from perfect. I suggest to switch to WKWebView.

See this question Open target="_blank" links outside of UIWebView in Safari for details about UIWebView-based implementation of this functionality.

UPD: Checked again. For case with target="_blank", I receive 2 subsequent shouldStartLoadWithRequest: calls, first with UIWebViewNavigationTypeLinkClicked, second with UIWebViewNavigationTypeOther. So, in my case all links opened in Safari with code from question. Checked on iOS 9.1 and iOS 8.4.

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Borys Verebskyi
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  • thanks a lot, but I still don't understand how the target blank DO open inside the webView and the others DON'T, what is the reason for this? –  Mar 01 '16 at 15:31
  • Thank you, but still, you say "there is no easy way to differ this case from many "other" cases", so how does the system differ, and does the opposite of what I want (while in both cases navigationType = UIWebView...LinkClicked)? –  Mar 01 '16 at 15:55