Question

How can I have a UIWebView load a file that is really an HTML file but has it’s extension changed to .wxyz ? However there are a group of files that contain hyperlinks between the files. The hyperlinks in the documents point to files with the .html extension.

So, what I need to have happen is for the UIWebView to recognize that .wxyz == .html and will open the file and when a link like this is clicked <a href="myHTML.html">A Link</a> will open the file myHTML.wxyz .

Should I subclass UIWebView? Or is there another way to do this?

All of these .wxyz files will be contained within the app and not on a server.

Answer 1

I think you can do this with UIWebViewDelegate webView:shouldStartLoadWithRequest:navigationType: – just detect requests for html that also have a wxyz resource equivalent, return NO, and make a request for the wxyz type instead. The code below should give the gist of it:

- (BOOL) webView:(UIWebView *)webView shouldStartLoadWithRequest:(NSURLRequest *)request navigationType:(UIWebViewNavigationType)navigationType
{
    // if it's not a link click, return YES
    if (navigationType != UIWebViewNavigationTypeLinkClicked) {
        return YES;
    }

    NSString *ext= [[request URL] pathExtension];
    if ([@"html" isEqualToString:ext]) {
        if (/* filename matches one of your wxyz resources */) {

            // user clicked an html file that should be loaded via wxyz:
            NSURL *newURL = [[request URL] URLByDeletingPathExtension];
            newURL = [newURL URLByAppendingPathExtension:@"wxyz"];
            NSURLRequest *newRequest = [NSURLRequest requestWithURL:newURL];
            [webView loadRequest:newRequest];
            return NO;

        }
    }
}