cordova-plugin-webview-switch

Experimental plugin to switch the webview and origin at runtime.

Please read warning and do not use it in production apps.

Attention ⚠️

This plugin only loads webviews, installed as plugins, like WKWebView or Ionic WKWebView. App crashes and incompatibilities with Cordova updates may occurr.

If callbacks from plugins fire after reloading the webview, the app will crash.

Use with caution!

After calling load() the main view in the app will restart!

Webview switching

iOS only now

WebViews must be installed as plugins such as:

Install WKWebview plugin(s) and configure it as default in config.xml:

• Apache WKWebView
• Ionic WKWebView

<feature name="CDVWKWebViewEngine">
  <param name="ios-package" value="CDVWKWebViewEngine" />
</feature>

<preference name="CordovaWebViewEngine" value="CDVWKWebViewEngine" />

This plugin creates the global Javascript object WebviewSwitch which has the funtion load()to switch the Cordova webview (plugin).

Examples:

• Switch to default Cordova UIWebview at runtime: WebviewSwitch.load('CDVUIWebViewEngine')
• Switch to WKWebview at runtime: WebviewSwitch.load('CDVWKWebViewEngine')
• The In-App-Browser plugin works too and shares the session. But don´t forget to set usewkwebview to the correct value if you need a shared session.

Hostname switching

iOS only now

⚠️ This is just useful as a workaround for a webkit bug and may break anytime!

You should avoid this method, since it reloads the webview as well. But it can be a workaround for this webkit bug, which prevents apps running in Ionic webview from using cookies. Handle with care since it might affect your applications security and stability.

The Ionic webview plugin runs on a custom scheme. The default scheme is ionic://localhost, which can be changed at buildtime by setting <preference name="Hostname" value="app" /> in config.xml.

If you need to change the hostname at runtime (for example for CORS issues for domains that can be configured in the app), this plugins offers the setHostname(name) method.

If you change the hostname like this WebviewSwitch.setHostname('myserver.com'), the app will reload and run with the origin ionic://myserver.com. This will treat HTTP requests to myserver.com as same-origin in current iOS.