WKWebView: Issues with opening links in Safari

Question

Before I begin it should be noted that part of my question is a duplicate of this post which doesn't have an accepted answer. Also, I have read several other SO posts that are similar to my question, but not exact, such as this and this.

Question:

I use a WKWebView for displaying text marked up in HTML. Some of the text contains links, which I want to be opened in Safari when tapped. I've gotten pretty far, but I'm still experiencing 2 major issues.

1) The WKWebView doesn't respond to the first tap of the session, i.e. the first link that is tapped has to be tapped twice for Safari to open. Any link tapping afterwards opens Safari immediately.

2) Safari only opens to the URL of the first link that is tapped. Let's say 3 URLs are being displayed: A, B, and C. If A is tapped first then tapping any of the other 2 URLs will always open Safari to A as long as that WKWebView is initialized. If B is tapped first, Safari will only open to B, etc.

Here is my Swift code that I think is most relevant to this question:

class CustomWebView: WKWebView, WKUIDelegate, WKNavigationDelegate {

    convenience init() {

        let config = WKWebViewConfiguration()
        config.dataDetectorTypes = [.all]

        self.init(frame: .zero, configuration: config)
        navigationDelegate = self
        uiDelegate = self
    }

    func webView(_ webView: WKWebView, decidePolicyFor navigationResponse: WKNavigationResponse, decisionHandler: @escaping (_: WKNavigationResponsePolicy) -> Void) {
        decisionHandler(.allow)
    }

    func webView(_ webView: WKWebView, decidePolicyFor navigationAction: WKNavigationAction, decisionHandler: @escaping (_: WKNavigationActionPolicy) -> Void) {

        if let url = navigationAction.request.url {
        print("url: \(url)")

            let paths = url.absoluteString.components(separatedBy: ",")
            print("paths: \(paths)")

            for path in paths {

                if path.contains("link:") {

                    let link = path.replacingOccurrences(of: "link:", with: "").replacingOccurrences(of: "%22", with: "")
                    print("link: \(link)")

                    if let cleanedURL = URL(string: link) {
                    print("cleanedURL: \(cleanedURL)")

                        UIApplication.shared.open(cleanedURL, options: [:], completionHandler: nil)
                        decisionHandler(.cancel)
                        return
                    }
                }
            }
        }
        decisionHandler(.allow)
    }
}

Here is some sample HTML that I'm testing:

<a href="https://www.bbc.com/">https://www.bbc.com/</a>
<div>
    <br />
</div>
<div><a href="https://www.youtube.com/">https://www.youtube.com/</a>
    <br />
</div>
<div>
    <br />
</div>
<div><a href="https://stackoverflow.com/">https://stackoverflow.com/</a>
    <br />
</div>

Here are what the print statements show:

Step 1

Tap link A:

url: callback://0/underline,justifyLeft,textColor

paths: ["callback://0/underline", "justifyLeft", "textColor"]

Step 2

Tap link A for a second time:

url: callback://0/underline,justifyLeft,textColor,link:https://www.bbc.com/

paths: ["callback://0/underline", "justifyLeft", "textColor", "link:https://www.bbc.com/"]

link: https://www.bbc.com/

cleanedURL: https://www.bbc.com/

Step 3

Tapping link A, B, or C after doing Step 2 gives the same print statements as Step 2.

Other notes:

The HTML is coming from ZSSRichTextEditor, which is implemented in another part of the app to let the user input marked up HTML. Sometimes when a user inputs a link the HTML that is spat out by the editor surrounds it in %22, which is why I include removing it in the code above.

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Apr 03 '20 at 05:24

0

You could try checking the action's type.

  func webView(_ webView: WKWebView, decidePolicyFor navigationAction: WKNavigationAction, decisionHandler: @escaping (_: WKNavigationActionPolicy) -> Void) {
    if navigationAction.navigationType == .linkActivated,
      let reqURL = navigationAction.request.url {
      UIApplication.shared.open(reqURL, options: [:], completionHandler: nil)
      decisionHandler(.cancel)

    } else {
      decisionHandler(.allow)
    }
  }

But the problem is many websites intercept the click actions on link elements, to trigger the navigation in JavaScript instead. Those end up sent to decidePolicyFor as .other navigation actions, instead of .linkActivated.

answered Apr 03 '20 at 05:24

Greg de J

320
1
2
8

Thanks for the response. Your check might be a good idea, but it won't affect either of the issues I'm experiencing. – Grambo Apr 03 '20 at 13:32
Can you tell a bit about the HTML you're displaying? Is it a site you or your company owns? Or do you need to open links in Safari for any website? – Greg de J Apr 03 '20 at 13:59
The WebView is displaying marked up text that a user inputs in a different scene, so they can link to any website. In my example A and C are different SO links, and B is a YouTube link. The issues are independent of what the URLs in the HTML are. What seems to be happening is that for issue 2) the WebView is doing something like caching the first link that is opened and ignoring consecutive URLs. For issue 1) it might be a loading problem. – Grambo Apr 03 '20 at 14:12
Yes the target URLs don't matter, but the link elements may. Are they regular ``? Do they have `"target=_blank"`? Do they have `click` events? May help if you post a sample of that HTML too. Also I don't think webviews cache links. I'd try putting a `print` command in `decidePolicyFor` to inspect the `navigationAction`. – Greg de J Apr 03 '20 at 14:22
I've edited my question to include the HTML I'm testing, as well as what it prints out and an explanation of where its coming from. Thanks for sticking with this; I hope it helps! – Grambo Apr 03 '20 at 15:17
Very suspicious the URL printed is not "https://www.bbc.com/", especially from the very first tap. There seems to be some JS messing things around, likely related to ZSSRichTextEditor. For what it's worth, I tried injecting your sample HTML in my demo with `loadHTMLString`, and got the expected result. – Greg de J Apr 04 '20 at 05:19

WKWebView: Issues with opening links in Safari

1 Answers1