Android Webview Anchor Link (Jump link) not working

Question

Hi,

I have a WebView in my Android App that is loading an HTML string using the loadDataWithBaseURL() method. The problem is that local anchor links (<a href="#link">...) are not working correctly. When the link is clicked, it becomes highlighted, but does not scroll to the corresponding anchor.

This also does not work if I use the WebView's loadUrl() method to load a page that contains anchor links. However, if I load the same URL in the browser, the anchor links do work.

Is there any special handling required to get these to work for a WebView?

I am using API v4 (1.6).

There isn't much to the code, here are the relevant parts of some test code I've been working with:

WebView detailBody = (WebView) findViewById(R.id.article_detail_body);
String s = "<a href=\"#link\">LINK!</a><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><a name=\"link\"></a>Testing!";
detailBody.loadDataWithBaseURL(API.HomeURL(this), s, "text/html", "utf-8", "");

Answer 1

try this

String myTemplate = "<a href=\"#link\">LINK!</a><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><a name=\"link\"></a>Testing!";

myWebView.loadDataWithBaseURL(null, myTemplate, "text/html", "utf-8", null);

the word "Testing!" must be outside of the screen to see it works.

Answer 2

It looks like the problem is that I had a WebView within a ScrollView. The WebView isn't able to scroll to an anchor link when configured like this. After refactoring my layout to eliminate the ScrollView, the anchor links work correctly.