Cocoa/WebKit, having "window.open()" Javascipt links opening in an instance of Safari

Question

I am building a really basic Cocoa application using WebKit, to display a Flash/Silverlight application within it. Very basic, no intentions for it to be a browser itself.

So far I have been able to get it to open basic html links (<a href="..." />) in a new instance of Safari using

[[NSWorkspace sharedWorkspace] openURL:[request URL]];

Now my difficulty is opening a link in a new instance of Safari when window.open() is used in JavaScript. I "think" (and by this, i have been hacking away at the code and am unsure if i actually did or not) I got this kind of working by setting the WebView's policyDelegate and implementing its

-webView:decidePolicyForNavigationAction:request:frame:decisionListener:

delegate method. However this led to some erratic behavior.

So the simple question, what do I need to do so that when window.open() is called, the link is opened in a new instance of Safari.

Thanks

Big point, I am normally a .NET developer, and have only been working with Cocoa/WebKit for a few days.

Answer 1

You don't mention what kind of erratic behaviour you are seeing. A quick possibility, is that when implementing the delegate method you forgot to tell the webview you are ignoring the click by calling the ignore method of the WebPolicyDecisionListener that was passed to your delegate, which may have put things into a weird state.

If that is not the issue, then how much control do you have over the content you are displaying? The policy delegate gives you easy mechanisms to filter all resource loads (as you have discovered), and all new window opens via webView:decidePolicyForNewWindowAction:request:newFrameName:decisionListener:. All window.open calls should funnel through that, as will anything else that triggers a new window.

If there are other window opens you want to keep inside your app, you will to do a little more work. One of the arguments passed into the delegate is a dictionary containing information about the event. Insie that dictionary the WebActionElementKey will have a dictionary containing a number of details, including the original dom content of the link. If you want to poke around in there you can grab the actual DOM element, and check the text of the href to see if it starts with window.open. That is a bit heavy weight, but if you want fine grained control it will give it to you.

Answer 2

I made from progress last night and pinned down part of my problem.

I am already using webView:decidePolicyForNewWindowAction:request:newFrameName:decisionListener: and I have gotten it to work with anchor tags, however the method never seems to get called when JavaScript is invoked.

However when window.open() is called webView:createWebViewWithRequest:request is called, I have tried to force the window to open in Safari here, however request is always null. So I can never read the URL out.

I have done some searching around, and this seems to be a known "misfeature" however I have not been able to find a way to work around it.

From what I understand createWebViewWithRequest gives you the ability to create the new webview, the the requested url is then sent to the new webView to be loaded. This is the best explanation I have been able to find so far.

So while many people have pointed out this problem, I have yet to see any solution which fits my needs. I will try to delve a little deeper into the decidePolicyForNewWindowAction again.

Thanks!

Answer 3

I'm having the exact same problem.

It seems to be a bug that webView:decidePolicyForNewWindowAction:request:newFrameName:decisionListener is not called.

Dirk

Answer 4

Well, I'm handling it by creating a dummy webView, setting it's frameLoad delegate to a custom class that handles

- (void)webView:decidePolicyForNavigationAction:actionInformation :request:frame:decisionListener:

and opens a new window there.

code :

- (WebView *)webView:(WebView *)sender createWebViewWithRequest:(NSURLRequest *)request {
    //this is a hack because request URL is null here due to a bug in webkit  
    return [newWindowHandler webView];
}

and NewWindowHandler :

@implementation NewWindowHandler

-(NewWindowHandler*)initWithWebView:(WebView*)newWebView {
    webView = newWebView;

    [webView setUIDelegate:self];
    [webView setPolicyDelegate:self];  
    [webView setResourceLoadDelegate:self];

    return self;
}

- (void)webView:(WebView *)sender decidePolicyForNavigationAction:(NSDictionary *)actionInformation request:(NSURLRequest *)request frame:(WebFrame *)frame decisionListener:(id<WebPolicyDecisionListener>)listener {
    [[NSWorkspace sharedWorkspace] openURL:[actionInformation objectForKey:WebActionOriginalURLKey]];
}

-(WebView*)webView {
    return webView;
}