ios - Open target="_blank" links outside of UIWebView in Safari

Question

Inside my iOS Application I have an UIWebView.

Now I want all links that have the attribute target="_blank" not to open inside my WebView but externally in Safari.

How can I do this?

Answer 1

My answer, which is a from an answer I found on stack overflow for the Android WebView. But actually, both webview have the same problem and same (dirty) fix:

- (BOOL)webView:(UIWebView *)webView shouldStartLoadWithRequest:(NSURLRequest *)request     navigationType:(UIWebViewNavigationType)navigationType
{
    if ([request.URL.absoluteString hasPrefix:@"newtab:"])
    {
        // JS-hacked URl is a target=_blank url - manually open the browser.
        NSURL *url = [NSURL URLWithString:[request.URL.absoluteString substringFromIndex:7]];
        [[UIApplication sharedApplication] openURL:url];

        return true;
    }

    return true;
}

- (void)webViewDidFinishLoad:(UIWebView *)webView
{
    // JS Injection hack to solve the target="_blank" issue and open a real browser in such case.
    NSString *JSInjection = @"javascript: var allLinks = document.getElementsByTagName('a'); if (allLinks) {var i;for (i=0; i<allLinks.length; i++) {var link = allLinks[i];var target = link.getAttribute('target'); if (target && target == '_blank') {link.setAttribute('target','_self');link.href = 'newtab:'+link.href;}}}";
    [webView stringByEvaluatingJavaScriptFromString:JSInjection];
}

This solves both the target="_blank" issue to open in safari, AND keeps opening standard links within the webview.