In a WebView is there a way for shouldOverrideUrlLoading to determine if it is catching a redirect vs. a user clicking a link?

Question

I would like to allow redirects to happen naturally in the WebView and only catch a new url if it is a happening because a user clicked something.

Answer 1

I had a similar problem. I needed to open a page in a WebView in my activity. However, when users clicked on a link in the page, I wanted it to be opened in a "new window," meaning the browser activity. This posed a problem if the page has a redirect. In order to accomplish this, I did the following:

1. I only show the webview once the page has finished loading.
2. I keep a boolean telling me when the page had finished loading. User interaction can only happen after a page had finished loading. otherwise it's a redirect and should be opened in my acitivty.

Code sample:

private boolean mLoaded = false;

@Override
public boolean shouldOverrideUrlLoading(WebView view, String url) {
    if(mLoaded){ // open in new browser window only if page already finished
        try
        {
            Uri uri = Uri.parse(url);
            Intent intent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW, uri);
            activity.startActivity(intent);
        }
        catch (Exception e)
        {
            Logger.log(e);
        }
    }
    return true;
}

@Override
public void onPageFinished(WebView webView, String url) {
        layoutHoldingTheWebView.setVisibility(View.VISIBLE);
        mLoaded = true;
    }
}