Android webview, loading javascript file in assets folder

Question

I've seen this question has been asked a lot of times, but still can't manage to get my code working.

I want my webview to load some URL (say www.google.com) and then apply some javascript stored in assets/jstest.js, which contains the following:

function test(){
document.bgColor="#00FF00"; //turns to green the background color
}

And here's where I try to load the JS:

@Override  
public void onPageFinished(WebView view, String url){
    view.loadUrl("javascript:(function() { "
                + " document.bgColor='#FF0000';" //turns to red the background color
                + " var script=document.createElement('script'); "
                + " script.setAttribute('type','text/javascript'); "
                + " script.setAttribute('src', 'file:///android_asset/jstest.js'); "
                + " script.onload = function(){ "
                + "     test(); "
                + " }; "
                + " document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0].appendChild(script); "
                + "})()"); 
} 

I know the javascript here works because the background color actually turns to red, but for some reason it won't load jstest.js. I think the problem might be in file path (I'm certain every other line of the javascript code is correct), but it looks correct to me. And the file is in the right folder.

What am I missing?

EDIT:

Since WebResourceResponse class is available only with API Level 11, here's what I've figured out in the end.

public void onPageFinished(WebView view, String url){
        String jscontent = "";
        try{
            InputStream is = am.open("jstest.js"); //am = Activity.getAssets()
            InputStreamReader isr = new InputStreamReader(is);
            BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(isr);

            String line;
            while (( line = br.readLine()) != null) {
                jscontent += line;
            }
            is.close(); 
        }
        catch(Exception e){}
        view.loadUrl("javascript:(" + jscontent + ")()"); 
    } 

with the jstest.js simply containing:

function() {
    document.bgColor="#00FF00";
}

Answer 1

I tried the same thing, loading a bookmarklet (the javascript code in your loadUrl() call) into a third-party page. My bookmarklet also depends on other assets (javascript and css files) which would not load with a file:///android_asset URL.

That's because the security context of the page is still that of, e.g., http://www.google.com, and that's not allowed access to file: URLs. You should be able to see the errors if you supply/override a WebChromeClient.onConsoleMessage().

I ended up with a kludge where I changed the bookmarklet's asset references to a bogus URL scheme, like:

asset:foo/bar/baz.js

and added a WebViewClient.shouldInterceptRequest() override which looks for those and loads them from assets using AssetManager.open().

One thing I don't like about this kludge is that the asset: scheme is open to any third-party HTML/Javascript on any page my view loads, giving them access to my app's assets.

One alternative, which I didn't try, would be to embed the sub-assets in the bookmarklet using data: URLs, but that can get unwieldy.

I'd much prefer it if there was a way to manipulate the security context of just the JS bookmarklet I'm loading in loadUrl(), but I can't find anything like that.

Here's a snippet:

import android.webkit.WebResourceResponse;
...
    private final class FooViewClient extends WebViewClient
    {
    private final String bookmarklet;
    private final String scheme;

    private FooViewClient(String bookmarklet, String scheme)
        {
        this.bookmarklet = bookmarklet;
        this.scheme = scheme;
        }

    @Override
    public void onPageFinished(WebView view, String url)
        {
        view.loadUrl(bookmarklet);
        }

    @Override
    public WebResourceResponse shouldInterceptRequest(WebView view, String url)
        {
        if (url.startsWith(scheme))
            try
                {
                return new WebResourceResponse(url.endsWith("js") ? "text/javascript" : "text/css", "utf-8",
                        Foo.this.getAssets().open(url.substring(scheme.length())));
                }
            catch (IOException e)
                {
                Log.e(getClass().getSimpleName(), e.getMessage(), e);
                }

        return null;
        }
    }

Answer 2

I think the iceam cream webview client of cordova does the very thing you want to do.

It would be nice if this was documented somewhere but, as far as I can see, it is not.

Take a look at cordova's android github: https://github.com/apache/incubator-cordova-android/blob/master/framework/src/org/apache/cordova/IceCreamCordovaWebViewClient.java