WebView

Introduction#

WebView is a view that display web pages inside your application. By this you can add your own URL.

Remarks#

Please don’t forget to add permission in your Android manifest file

<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.INTERNET" />

JavaScript alert dialogs in WebView - How to make them work

By default, WebView does not implement JavaScript alert dialogs, ie. alert() will do nothing. In order to make you need to firstly enable JavaScript (obviously..), and then set a WebChromeClient to handle requests for alert dialogs from the page:

webView.setWebChromeClient(new WebChromeClient() {
    //Other methods for your WebChromeClient here, if needed..

    @Override
    public boolean onJsAlert(WebView view, String url, String message, JsResult result) {
        return super.onJsAlert(view, url, message, result);
    }
});

Here, we override onJsAlert, and then we call through to the super implementation, which gives us a standard Android dialog. You can also use the message and URL yourself, for example if you want to create a custom styled dialog or if you want to log them.

Communication from Javascript to Java (Android)

Android Activity

package com.example.myapp;

import android.os.Bundle;
import android.app.Activity;
import android.webkit.WebView;

public class WebViewActivity extends Activity {
    @Override
    protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
    
        WebView webView = new WebView(this);
        setContentView(webView);

       /* 
        *   Note the label Android, this is used in the Javascript side of things
        *   You can of course change this.
        */
        webView.addJavascriptInterface(new JavascriptHandler(), "Android");
    
        webView.loadUrl("https://example.com");
    }
}

Java Javascript Handler

import android.webkit.JavascriptInterface;

public class JavascriptHandler {

    /**
     *  Key point here is the annotation @JavascriptInterface
     *
     */
    @JavascriptInterface
    public void jsCallback() {
       // Do something
    }

    @JavascriptInterface
    public void jsCallbackTwo(String dummyData) {
       // Do something
    }
}

Web Page, Javascript call

<script>
... 
Android.jsCallback();
...
Android.jsCallback('hello test');
...
</script>

Extra Tip

Passing in a complex data structure, a possible solution is use JSON.

Android.jsCallback('{ "fake-var" : "fake-value", "fake-array" : [0,1,2] }');

On the Android side use your favorite JSON parser ie: JSONObject

Communication from Java to Javascript

Basic Example

package com.example.myapp;

import android.os.Bundle;
import android.app.Activity;
import android.webkit.WebView;

public class WebViewActivity extends Activity {
    
    private Webview webView;

    @Override
    protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
       super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);

       webView = new WebView(this);
       webView.getSettings().setJavaScriptEnabled(true);

       setContentView(webView);

       webView.loadUrl("https://example.com");

       /*
        * Invoke Javascript function
        */
       webView.loadUrl("javascript:testJsFunction('Hello World!')");
    }

   /**
    * Invoking a Javascript function
    */
   public void doSomething() {
     this.webView.loadUrl("javascript:testAnotherFunction('Hello World Again!')");
   }
}

Open dialer example

If the web page a contains phone number you can make a call using your phone’s dialer. This code checks for the url which starts with tel: then make an intent to open dialer and you can make a call to the clicked phone number:

public boolean shouldOverrideUrlLoading(WebView view, String url) {
    if (url.startsWith("tel:")) { 
            Intent intent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_DIAL,
                    Uri.parse(url)); 
            startActivity(intent); 
    }else if(url.startsWith("http:") || url.startsWith("https:")) {
        view.loadUrl(url);
    }
    return true;
}

Troubleshooting WebView by printing console messages or by remote debugging

Printing webview console messages to logcat

To handle console messages from web page you can override onConsoleMessage in WebChromeClient:

final class ChromeClient extends WebChromeClient {
    @Override
    public boolean onConsoleMessage(ConsoleMessage msg) {
        Log.d(
            "WebView", 
            String.format("%s %s:%d", msg.message(), msg.lineNumber(), msg.sourceId())
        );
        return true;
    }
}

And set it in your activity or fragment:

webView.setWebChromeClient(new ChromeClient());

So this sample page:

<html>
<head>
    <script type="text/javascript">
        console.log('test message');
    </script>
</head>
<body>
</body>
</html>

will write log ‘test message’ to logcat:

WebView: test message sample.html:4

console.info(), console.warn() and console.error() are also supported by chrome-client.

Remote debugging android devices with Chrome

Your can remote debug webview based application from you desktop Chrome.

Enable USB debugging on your Android device

On your Android device, open up Settings, find the Developer options section, and enable USB debugging.

Connect and discover your Android device

Open page in chrome following page: chrome://inspect/#devices

From the Inspect Devices dialog, select your device and press inspect. A new instance of Chrome’s DevTools opens up on your development machine.

More detailed guideline and description of DevTools can be found on developers.google.com

Open Local File / Create dynamic content in Webview

Layout.xml

                <WebView
                android:id="@+id/WebViewToDisplay"
                android:layout_width="fill_parent"
                android:layout_height="fill_parent"
                android:layout_gravity="center"
                android:fadeScrollbars="false" />

Load data into WebViewToDisplay

        WebView webViewDisplay;
        StringBuffer LoadWEb1;

        webViewDisplay = (WebView) findViewById(R.id.WebViewToDisplay);
        LoadWEb1 = new StringBuffer();
        LoadWEb1.append("<html><body><h1>My First Heading</h1><p>My first paragraph.</p>");
        //Sample code to read parameters at run time
        String strName = "Test Paragraph";
        LoadWEb1.append("<br/><p>"+strName+"</p>");
        String result = LoadWEb1.append("</body></html>").toString();
                WebSettings webSettings = webViewDisplay.getSettings();
                webSettings.setJavaScriptEnabled(true);
                webViewDisplay.getSettings().setBuiltInZoomControls(true);
                if (android.os.Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= 11){
                    webViewDisplay.setLayerType(View.LAYER_TYPE_SOFTWARE, null);
                    webViewDisplay.getSettings().setDisplayZoomControls(false);
                }

                webViewDisplay.loadDataWithBaseURL(null, result, "text/html", "utf-8",
                        null);
                //To load local file directly from assets folder use below code
                //webViewDisplay.loadUrl("file:///android_asset/aboutapp.html");