Cordova - window.history.back() not working on HTML back button in iOS 9

Question

In my application I am using window.history.back to navigate back to previous View

Declaration of back button

 <div class="back_icon"  id="verification_back_icon"><a href="#" data-rel="back"  data-transition="slidedown"><img src="images/back_btn.png" width="23"/></a></div>

Button action:

$( "#verification_back_icon" ).on( "click", function ( e ) {
    if ( checkDirtyVacation() ) {
        e.preventDefault();
        if ( backbtnAlt == false ) {
            backbtnAlt = true;
            confirm( "All data will be lost. Do you want to continue?",
                function ( r ) {
                    if ( r ) {
                        //onBackKeyDown();
                        clearVacationvalues();
                        window.history.back();//this is not working in iOS 9
                    } else {

                    }
                    backbtnAlt = false;
                } );
        }
    }
    else {
        e.preventDefault();
        if ( $( ".vaction_location" ).hasClass( "chkSelect" ) ) {
            $( ".vaction_location" ).removeClass( "chkSelect" );
            $( ".vaction_location" ).addClass( "chkUnSelect" );
        }


        window.history.back();
    }
} );

This worked perfectly till iOS 8.4. In iOS 9 this navigation is not working.

I am using Apache Cordova native platform version 3.8.0 .

If anyone facing the similar problem please suggest me. I have tried with history.back doesn't work on iOS using Cordova, but no luck

Thank you.

Answer 1

The problem is that setting of window.location.hash is asynchronous in the iOS 9.0 UIWebview (used by Cordova/Phonegap) - see this bug report for details.

This causes issues when using jQuery Mobile which by default uses window.location.hash to navigate between "pages". It also causes issues with popups/dialogs/select menus which use this mechanism.

You can fix this by preventing jQuery Mobile from automatically listening/using location.hash:

$(document).on("deviceready", function(){
    $.mobile.hashListeningEnabled = false;
});

However, I found this had side effects on Android such as causing the hardware back button not to work, so I targeted it specifically at iOS 9 using cordova-plugin-device:

$(document).on("deviceready", function(){
    if(device.platform === "iOS" && parseInt(device.version) === 9){
        $.mobile.hashListeningEnabled = false;
    }
});

Note that I'm using navigator.app.backHistory() not window.history.back() in conjunction with hashListeningEnabled = false - this may make a difference.

Alternatively you can use this plugin to use the new WKWebView on iOS 8 and 9. WKWebView is used by Safari on iOS 8+, hence JQM sites viewed in the browser on iOS 9 don't encounter these issues. cordova-ios 3 still uses UIWebView due to a bug in WKWebView in iOS 8, but the upcoming cordova-ios 4 will support a WKWebView core plugin for iOS 9+. Note that there are additional considerations when using WKWebView with Cordova/Phonegap apps due to its stricter security, such as requiring CORS headers on XHR responses.