How to intercept url loads in WebView (android)?

Question

I have a WebView in which I load a page with a custom link (like app://action). I registered the url schemes in the manifest file and when I click on the link, the onResume() method of my Activity is called with the correct data and it works OK.

My problem is that the WebView still try to load the link and my WebView ends up to show a "Web page unavailable" message. I don't want that.

How can I prevent the WebView to load the url?

Here's my code :

WebView banner = ...
banner.setWebViewClient(new WebViewClient() {

    @Override
    public void onLoadResource(WebView view, String url) {

        if (url.startsWith("app://")) {

            Intent i = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW, Uri.parse(url), getContext(), Main.class);
            //startActivity(i);
        }
    }
}

banner.loadUrl("url_to_the_banner");

Answer 1

Use WebViewClient.shouldOverrideUrlLoading instead.

public boolean shouldOverrideUrlLoading(WebView view, String url){
    // handle by yourself
    return true; 
}

WebViewClient Reference

Updates: Method shouldOverrideUrlLoading(WebView, String) is deprecated in API level 24. Use shouldOverrideUrlLoading(WebView, WebResourceRequest) instead.

Answer 2

But it must return false otherwise, so:

@Override
public boolean shouldOverrideUrlLoading(WebView view, String url){
    if(url.startsWith(myString){
        // handle by yourself
        return true;
    } 
    // ...
    return false;
}