Question

In my app I have a UIWebView-based view controller showing info and credits about the app itself. As part of the info, the app version is displayed, as retrieved from the infoDictionary of the mainBundle. So this string is not in the original HTML; it is set programmatically, by replacing a placeholder.

Therefore the sequence is:
1) I load the HTML into a NSString
2) I replace the placeholder with the actual version
3) I show the resulting string in UIWebView by invoking method loadHTMLString:baseURL:

The HTML also has hyperlinks to some web pages in the internet.
Everything is fine, but for this problem:
If I touch a hyperlink, and therefore navigate to the corresponding web page, I will not be able to go back to my original info page (canGoBack returns NO, goBack does nothing).

Any suggestion?
Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

In the end, I have found a satisfactory solution, that I would like to share.

1) I changed the HTML code of my info page, by inserting the following code where I want to show the app version:

<p>App  version:
<script type="text/javascript">
    var args = document.location.search.substring(1).split("&");
    for (var i in args) {
        var nameValue = args[i].split("=");
        if (nameValue[0] == "version")
            var version = nameValue[1];
    }
    if (version)
        document.write(version);
</script>
</p>

This piece of code will parse the query part of the URL, looking for a “version=<version>” argument, and use its value to show the app version.

2) When preparing the URL to be used by the UIWebView, I retrieve the app version from the main bundle:

NSString* version = [[[NSBundle mainBundle] infoDictionary] objectForKey:@"CFBundleVersion"];

Then I append it at the end of my URL string:

NSString* urlString = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"<my_info_page>.html?version=%@", version];

3) Finally, I use the UIWebView to show the page:

NSURL* url = [[NSURL alloc] initWithString:urlString];
NSURLRequest* request [[NSURLRequest alloc] initWithUrl:url];
[mWebView loadRequest:urlRequest];
[urlRequest release];
[url release];

where mWebView is an IBOutlet, of type UIWebView, properly connected to the web view in the XIB file.

It works correctly on my iPhone 4, including the back/forward functions of the web view when following hyperlinks, while keeping the user inside the app.