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Titanium.UI.WebView

viewAndroidiPhoneiPadmacOSsince 0.8

The web view allows you to open an HTML5 based view which can load either local or remote content.

Use the Titanium.UI.createWebView method or <WebView> Alloy element to create a web view.

Web views are more expensive to create than other native views because of the requirement to load the HTML browser into memory.

The web view content can be any valid web content such as HTML, PDF, SVG or other WebKit supported content types.

JavaScript Context in WebViews--Local vs. Remote Content

JavaScript in the web view executes in its own context. The web view can interact with this content, but most of this functionality is limited to local content.

Local Scripts

When running local web content (that is, content that is included in the application's resources), scripts have access to the Titanium namespace. In particular, when running local web content:

You can use Titanium.App.addEventListener and Titanium.App.fireEvent to receive and send application-level events.
Events can be logged using the Titanium.API logging methods.

Remote Scripts

Scripts downloaded from remote web servers cannot access the Titanium namespace.

To interact with remote content, wait until the content is loaded, then use the evalJS method to execute a JavaScript expression inside the web view and retrieve the value of an expression.

To trigger a message from the remote web page, refer to Titanium.UI.WebView.addScriptMessageHandler.

You can inject the local Ti.App.fireEvent bindings yourself by adding a script element using evalJS.

webview.evalJS(
  'javascript=(function addBinding(){' +
    'var s=document.createElement("script");' +
    's.setAttribute("type","text/javascript");' +
    's.innerHTML="' + /* insert content of binding.min.js */ + '";'
    +
    'document.getElementsByTagName("body")[0].appendChild(s);' +
  '})()'
);

The binding.min.js is available in the repository.

Local JavaScript Files

During the build process for creating a package, all JavaScript files, that is, any file with a '.js' extension, are removed and their content is encrypted and obfuscated into one resource, causing these files to not load properly in a WebView if they are loaded externally.

For JavaScript files referenced in static local HTML files, these JavaScript files are omitted from processing and left intact, which means they can be correctly loaded in the WebView.

For local JavaScript files not referenced in static local HTML files, for example, a dynamically-generated HTML file referencing a local JavaScript file, rename the file extension of the local JavaScript files to '.jslocal' instead of '.js'.

The build process for testing your application on the simulator, emulator or device does not affect the loading of local JavaScript files.

iOS Platform Implementation Notes

On the iOS platform, the native web view handles scrolling and other related touch events internally. If you add event listeners on the web view or its parent views for any of the standard touch events (touchstart, click, and so on), these events do not reach the native web view, and the user will not be able to scroll, zoom, click on links, and so on. To prevent this default behavior, set willHandleTouches to false.

In other words, you can have either Titanium-style events against the web view instance, or internal JavaScript events in the DOM, but not both.

Android Platform Implementation Notes

Android 4.4 and Later Support

Starting with Android 4.4 (API Level 19), the WebView component is based off of Chromium, introducing a number of changes to its rendering engine. Web content may look or behave differently depending on the Android version. The WebView does not have full feature parity with Chrome for Android.

By default, the Chromium WebView uses hardware acceleration, which may cause content to fail to render. If the WebView fails to render the content, the web view will clear itself, displaying only the default background color. The following log messages will be displayed in the console:

[WARN] :   AwContents: nativeOnDraw failed; clearing to background color.
[INFO] :   chromium: [INFO:async_pixel_transfer_manager_android.cc(56)]

To workaround this issue, you can enable software rendering by setting the WebView's borderRadius property to a value greater than zero.

If you are developing local HTML content and size your elements using percentages, the WebView may not calculate the sizes correctly when hardware acceleration is enabled, resulting in the same behavior previously mentioned.

To workaround this issue, you can use the previously mentioned workaround to enable software rendering, use absolute size values or use the onresize event to set the heights of the components. For example, if you have a div element with an id set to component that needs to use the entire web view, the following callback resizes the content to use the full height of the web view:

window.onresize= function(){
    document.getElementById("component").style.height = window.innerHeight + 'px';
};

For more information, see the following topics:

Plugin Support

The Android web view supports native plugins.

To use plugin content, you must set the pluginState property to either WEBVIEW_PLUGINS_ON or WEBVIEW_PLUGINS_ON_DEMAND.

You must also call pause when the current activity is paused, to prevent plugin content from continuing to run in the background. Call resume when the current activity is resumed. You can do this by adding listeners for the Titanium.Android.Activity.onPause and Titanium.Android.Activity.onResume events.

Accessing Cookies

On Android, the web view uses the system cookie store which does not share cookies with the Titanium.Network.HTTPClient cookie store. Developers can manage their cookies for both cookie stores using the methods Titanium.Network.addHTTPCookie, Titanium.Network.addSystemCookie, Titanium.Network.getHTTPCookies, Titanium.Network.getHTTPCookiesForDomain, Titanium.Network.getSystemCookies, Titanium.Network.removeHTTPCookie, Titanium.Network.removeHTTPCookiesForDomain, Titanium.Network.removeAllHTTPCookies, Titanium.Network.removeSystemCookie, Titanium.Network.removeAllSystemCookies.

WKWebView

With Titanium SDK 8.0.0, we now use WKWebView to implement Ti.UI.WebView (as Apple has deprecated UIWebView). WKWebView has few restriction specially with local file accessing. For supporting custom-fonts with WKWebView a little modification is required in the HTML files:

<style>
  @font-face
    {
      font-family: 'Lato-Regular';
      src: url('fonts/Lato-Regular.ttf');
    }
</style>

To have a WKWebView scale the page the same way as UIWebView, add the following meta tag to the HTML header:

<html>
  <head>
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
  </head>
</html>

Ti.UI.SIZE and WebViews

With Titanium 8.0.0+, Titanium.UI.SIZE does not work for WebViews. We recommend to give a fixed height to Titanium.UI.WebView (as noted in TIDOC-3355).

As a workaround you can try to get the document.body.scrollHeight inside Titanium.UI.WebView.load event of webview and set the height to webview. See following example.

var win = Ti.UI.createWindow();

var verticalView = Ti.UI.createView({layout: 'vertical', width: "100%", height: "100%"});

verticalView.add(Ti.UI.createLabel({text: 'Label 1', top: 30, width: Ti.UI.SIZE, height: Ti.UI.SIZE}));

var htmla = "<div style='font-family: Helvetica Neue; font-size:16px'><ul><li>Item 1</li><li>Item 2</li></ul></div>";
var html = "<!DOCTYPE html>";

html += "<html><head><meta name='viewport' content='width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, maximum-scale=1.0, user-scalable=0'><style type='text/css'>html {-webkit-text-size-adjust: none;}</style><script type='text/javascript'>document.ontouchmove = function(event){event.preventDefault();}</script></head><body style='overflow: hidden'>";
html += htmla;
html += "</body></html>";

var webview = Ti.UI.createWebView({left: '14dp', right: '14dp', top: '7dp', height: Ti.UI.SIZE, html: html, backgroundColor: "yellow"});

verticalView.add(webview);

verticalView.add(Ti.UI.createLabel({text: 'Label 2', top: 30, width: Ti.UI.SIZE, height: Ti.UI.SIZE}));

win.add(verticalView);

win.open();

webview.addEventListener('load', function(e) {
  var result = webview.evalJSSync('document.body.scrollHeight');
  Ti.API.info('webview height: ' + result);
  webview.height = result;
});

For More Information

See Integrating Web Content in the Titanium Mobile Guides for more information on using web views, including use cases, more code examples, and best practices for web view content.

Examples

Basic Web View to External URL

Create a web view to a remote URL and open the window as modal.

var webview = Titanium.UI.createWebView({url:'http://www.titaniumsdk.com'});
var window = Titanium.UI.createWindow();
window.add(webview);
window.open({modal:true});

Alloy XML Markup

Previous example as an Alloy view.

<Alloy>
    <Window id="win" modal="true">
        <WebView id="webview" url="http://www.titaniumsdk.com" />
    </Window>
</Alloy>

Listening to Web View properties in iOS

Create a web view and listen 'title' property of web view.

var webview = Ti.UI.createWebView({
    url:'http://www.titaniumsdk.com'
});
webview.startListeningToProperties([ 'title' ]);
webview.addEventListener('title', function(e) {
    alert('Title is : -' +e.value);
});
var window = Ti.UI.createWindow();
window.add(webview);
window.open();

Usage of allowedURLSchemes and handleurl in iOS

Create a web view and listen 'handleurl' event to open URL from Titanium platform.

var webview = Ti.UI.createWebView({
    url: 'https://www.google.com',
    allowedURLSchemes: [ 'https', 'http' ]
});

webview.addEventListener('handleurl', function(e) {
    var handler = e.handler;
    Ti.Platform.openURL(e.url);
    handler.invoke(Ti.UI.iOS.ACTION_POLICY_CANCEL);
});
var window = Ti.UI.createWindow();
window.add(webview);
window.open();

Properties 123

accessibilityDisableLongPress

BooleanAndroidsince 12.4.0

Parameters	Type	Description
name	String	Name of the event.
callback	Callback<Titanium.Event>	Callback function to invoke when the event is fired. 4 fields bubbles Boolean True if the event will try to bubble up if possible. cancelBubble Boolean Set to true to stop the event from bubbling. source Object Source object that fired the event. type String Name of the event fired.

Parameters	Type	Description
animation	Titanium.UI.Animation \| Dictionary<Titanium.UI.Animation>	Either a dictionary of animation properties or an Animation object.
callback?	Callback<Object>	Function to be invoked upon completion of the animation.

Parameters	Type	Description
point	Point	A point in this view's coordinate system. If this argument is missing an `x` or `y` property, or the properties can not be converted into numbers, an exception will be raised.
destinationView	Titanium.UI.View	View that specifies the destination coordinate system to convert to. If this argument is not a view, an exception will be raised.

Parameters	Type	Description
pageWidth	Number	The width in mils (thousandths of an inch) of the PDF (Android only)
pageHeight	Number	The height in mils (thousandths of an inch) of the PDF (Android only)
pageSize	Number	Predefined size. (Android only)
showMenu	Boolean	Will show Androids printing menu. No success callback afterwards. (Android only)
firstPageOnly	Boolean	Only print first page (Android only)
success	Callback<DataCreationResultAndroid>	Function to call upon PDF creation. (Android only) 1 field data Titanium.Blob The created data.
callback	Callback<DataCreationResult>	Function to call upon PDF creation. (iOS only) 3 fields data Titanium.Blob The created data. error String Error message, if any returned. success Boolean Indicates if the data creation successful or not.

Parameters	Type	Description
code	String	JavaScript code as a string. The code will be evaluated inside the web view context.
callback?	Callback<String>	Optional callback function for the result. Required on Windows, optional on iOS/Android.

Parameters	Type	Description
searchString	String	The string to search for.
options?	StringSearchOptions	Options for search. 3 fields backward? Boolean The direction to search from the current selection. The search will respect the writing direction of the document caseSensitive? Boolean Whether or not the search should be case sensitive. wraps? Boolean Whether the search should start at the beginning of the document once it reaches the end.
callback	Callback<SearchResult>	Function to call upon search finished. 2 fields error String Error message, if any returned. success Boolean Indicates if string found or not.

Parameters	Type	Description
username	String	Basic auth user name.
password	String	Basic auth password.
persistence	Number	Constants specify how long the credential will be kept. This is only supported on iOS and Titanium SDK 8.0.0+.

Parameters	Type	Description
html	String	New HTML to display in the web view.
options?	setHtmlOptions	Optional parameters for the content. Only used by iOS and Android. 2 fields baseURL String Sets the URL that the web content's paths will be relative to. mimeType? String Sets the MIME type for the content. Defaults to "text/html" if not specified.

Parameters	Type	Description
callback?	Callback<Titanium.Blob>	Function to be invoked upon completion. If non-null, this method will be performed asynchronously. If null, it will be performed immediately.
honorScaleFactor?	Boolean	Determines whether the image is scaled based on scale factor of main screen. (iOS only) When set to true, image is scale factor is honored. When set to false, the image in the blob has the same dimensions for retina and non-retina devices.

Event properties	Type	Description
url	String	URL of the web document being loaded.
navigationType	Number	Constant indicating the user's action.
isMainFrame	Boolean	Indicate if the event was generated from the main page or an iframe.

Event properties
Event properties	Type	Description
scale	Number	The scale factor relative to the points of the two touches in screen coordinates.
velocity	Number	The velocity of the pinch in scale factor per second.
time	Number	The event time of the current event being processed.
timeDelta	Number	The time difference in milliseconds between the previous accepted scaling event and the current scaling event.
currentSpan	Number	The average distance between each of the pointers forming the gesture in progress through the focal point.
currentSpanX	Number	The average X distance between each of the pointers forming the gesture in progress through the focal point.
currentSpanY	Number	The average Y distance between each of the pointers forming the gesture in progress through the focal point.
previousSpan	Number	The previous average distance between each of the pointers forming the gesture in progress through the focal point.
previousSpanX	Number	The previous average X distance between each of the pointers forming the gesture in progress through the focal point.
previousSpanY	Number	The previous average Y distance between each of the pointers forming the gesture in progress through the focal point.
focusX	Number	The X coordinate of the current gesture's focal point.
focusY	Number	The Y coordinate of the current gesture's focal point.
inProgress	Boolean	Returns `true` if a scale gesture is in progress, `false` otherwise.

Event properties	Type	Description
x	Number	X coordinate of the event from the `source` view's coordinate system.
y	Number	Y coordinate of the event from the `source` view's coordinate system.
obscured	Boolean	Returns `true` if the click passed through an overlapping window belonging to another app. This is a security feature to protect an app from "tapjacking", where a malicious app can use a system overlay to intercept touch events in your app or to trick the end-user to tap on UI in your app intended for the overlay.

Event properties	Type	Description
success	Boolean	Indicates a successful operation. Returns `false`.
error	String	Error message, if any returned. May be undefined.
code	Number	Error code. If the error was generated by the operating system, that system's error value is used. Otherwise, this value will be -1.
url	String	URL of the web document.

Event properties	Type	Description
handler	String	Handler Titanium.UI.iOS.WebViewDecisionHandler.
url	String	URL of the web document being loaded.

Event properties	Type	Description
url	String	URL of the web document being loaded.
body	String	The body of the message sent from webview.
name	String	The name of the message handler to which the message is sent.
isMainFrame	Boolean	A Boolean value indicating whether the frame is the web site's main frame or a subframe.

Event properties	Type	Description
value	Number	An estimate of what fraction of the current navigation has been loaded.
url	String	URL of the web document being loaded.

Event properties	Type	Description
title	String	Page title of webpage.
url	String	URL of the web document being loaded.

Event properties	Type	Description
direction	String	Direction of the swipe--either 'left', 'right', 'up', or 'down'.
x	Number	X coordinate of the event's endpoint from the `source` view's coordinate system.
y	Number	Y coordinate of the event's endpoint from the `source` view's coordinate system.
obscured	Boolean	Returns `true` if the swipe passed through an overlapping window belonging to another app. This is a security feature to protect an app from "tapjacking", where a malicious app can use a system overlay to intercept touch events in your app or to trick the end-user to tap on UI in your app intended for the overlay.