Restore history and current page on resuming webview

Question

I have a webview that I am navigating within. I have implemented go back and go forward. My problem is that when I return to the webview after visiting another activity, the history is lost i.e. the webview starts from the first url.

How do I code it so that after I call finish on the webview to swap to another activity on returning to the webview, the WebBackForwardList is restored and I am taken to the page I was on when I left the webview?

I have tried overriding onSaveInstanceState and onRestoreInstanceState using webview.save/restoreState(bundle) but with no success.

I have achieved returning to the last page by saving the last url in preferences, but have been unable to restore the entire history.

Answer 1

Are you reusing the webview?

The javadoc for restore() says:

This method should be called to restore the state of the WebView before using the object. If it is called after the WebView has had a chance to build state (load pages, create a back/forward list, etc.) there may be undesirable side-effects.

so regenerating the webview object may help.

Other avenues to research:

• WebView.restore() calls list.addHistoryItem(item) without clearing the list, so if you have a webView that is getting reused, it may help to call webView.clearHistory() first before the restore().

• This SO answer implies that there is a message you can send to the history list to add items.

Good luck , and please post back your progress.

--larry