Load in-app content

You can provide web-based content—such as HTML, JavaScript, and CSS—for your app to use that you statically compile into the app rather than fetch over the internet.

In-app content doesn't require internet access or consume a user's bandwidth. If the content is designed specifically for WebView only—that is, it depends on communicating with a native app—then users can't accidentally load it in a web browser.

However, there are some drawbacks to in-app content. Updating web-based content requires shipping a new app update, and there is the possibility of mismatched content between what's on a website and what's in the app on your device if users have outdated app versions.

WebViewAssetLoader

WebViewAssetLoader is a flexible and performant way to load in-app content in a WebView object. This class supports the following:

  • Loading content with an HTTP(S) URL for compatibility with the same-origin policy.
  • Loading subresources such as JavaScript, CSS, images, and iframes.

Include WebViewAssetLoader in your main activity file. The following is an example of loading simple web content from the assets folder:

Kotlin

private class LocalContentWebViewClient(private val assetLoader: WebViewAssetLoader) : WebViewClientCompat() {
    @RequiresApi(21)
    override fun shouldInterceptRequest(
        view: WebView,
        request: WebResourceRequest
    ): WebResourceResponse? {
        return assetLoader.shouldInterceptRequest(request.url)
    }

    // To support API < 21.
    override fun shouldInterceptRequest(
        view: WebView,
        url: String
    ): WebResourceResponse? {
        return assetLoader.shouldInterceptRequest(Uri.parse(url))
    }
}

Java

private static class LocalContentWebViewClient extends WebViewClientCompat {

    private final WebViewAssetLoader mAssetLoader;

    LocalContentWebViewClient(WebViewAssetLoader assetLoader) {
        mAssetLoader = assetLoader;
    }

    @Override
    @RequiresApi(21)
    public WebResourceResponse shouldInterceptRequest(WebView view,
                                     WebResourceRequest request) {
        return mAssetLoader.shouldInterceptRequest(request.getUrl());
    }

    @Override
    @SuppressWarnings("deprecation") // To support API < 21.
    public WebResourceResponse shouldInterceptRequest(WebView view,
                                     String url) {
        return mAssetLoader.shouldInterceptRequest(Uri.parse(url));
    }
}

Your app must configure a WebViewAssetLoader instance to suit its needs. The next section has an example.

Create in-app assets and resources

WebViewAssetLoader relies on PathHandler instances to load resources corresponding to a given resource path. Although you can implement this interface to retrieve resources as needed by your app, the Webkit library bundles AssetsPathHandler and ResourcesPathHandler for loading Android assets and resources, respectively.

To get started, create assets and resources for your app. Generally, the following applies:

  • Text files like HTML, JavaScript, and CSS belong in assets.
  • Images and other binary files belong in resources.

To add text-based web files to a project, do the following:

  1. In Android Studio, right-click the app > src > main folder and then choose New > Directory.
    An image showing Android Studio create-directory menus
    Figure 1. Create an assets folder for your project.
  2. Name the folder "assets".
    An image showing the asset folder
    Figure 2. Name the assets folder.
  3. Right-click the assets folder and then click New > File. Enter index.html and press the Return or Enter key.
  4. Repeat the previous step to create an empty file for stylesheet.css.
  5. Fill in the empty files you created with the content in the next two code samples.
```html
<!-- index.html content -->

<html>
  <head>
    <!-- Tip: Use relative URLs when referring to other in-app content to give
              your app code the flexibility to change the scheme or domain as
              necessary. -->
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="/assets/stylesheet.css">
  </head>
  <body>
    <p>This file is loaded from in-app content.p>
    <p> src="/res/drawable/android_robot.png" alt="Android robot" width="100"></p>
  </body>
</html>
```

```css
<!-- stylesheet.css content -->

body {
  background-color: lightblue;
}
```

To add an image-based web file to your project, do the following:

  1. Download the Android_symbol_green_RGB.png file to your local machine.

  2. Rename the file to android_robot.png.

  3. Manually move the file into your project's main/res/drawable directory on your hard drive.

Figure 4 shows the image you added and the text from the preceding code samples rendered in an app.

An image showing app rendered output
Figure 4. In-app HTML file and image file rendered in an app.

To complete the app, do the following:

  1. Register the handlers and configure the AssetLoader by adding the following code to the onCreate() method:

    Kotlin

    val assetLoader = WebViewAssetLoader.Builder()
                       .addPathHandler("/assets/", AssetsPathHandler(this))
                       .addPathHandler("/res/", ResourcesPathHandler(this))
                       .build()
webView.webViewClient = LocalContentWebViewClient(assetLoader)

    Java

    final WebViewAssetLoader assetLoader = new WebViewAssetLoader.Builder()
         .addPathHandler("/assets/", new WebViewAssetLoader.AssetsPathHandler(this))
         .addPathHandler("/res/", new WebViewAssetLoader.ResourcesPathHandler(this))
         .build();
mWebView.setWebViewClient(new LocalContentWebViewClient(assetLoader));

  2. Load the content by adding the following code to the onCreate() method:

    Kotlin

    webView.loadUrl("https://appassets.androidplatform.net/assets/index.html")

    Java

    mWebView.loadUrl("https://appassets.androidplatform.net/assets/index.html");

Mix in-app content with resources from your website

Your app might need to load a mix of in-app content and content from the internet, such as an in-app HTML page styled by your website's CSS. WebViewAssetLoader supports this use case. If none of the registered PathHandler instances can find a resource for the given path, WebView falls back to loading content from the internet. If you mix in-app content with resources from your website, reserve directory paths, such as /assets/ or /resources/, for in-app resources. Avoid storing any resources from your website in those locations.

Kotlin

val assetLoader = WebViewAssetLoader.Builder()
                        .setDomain("example.com") // Replace this with your website's domain.
                        .addPathHandler("/assets/", AssetsPathHandler(this))
                        .build()

webView.webViewClient = LocalContentWebViewClient(assetLoader)
val inAppHtmlUrl = "https://example.com/assets/index.html"
webView.loadUrl(inAppHtmlUrl)
val websiteUrl = "https://example.com/website/data.json"

// JavaScript code to fetch() content from the same origin.
val jsCode = "fetch('$websiteUrl')" +
        ".then(resp => resp.json())" +
        ".then(data => console.log(data));"

webView.evaluateJavascript(jsCode, null)

Java

final WebViewAssetLoader assetLoader = new WebViewAssetLoader.Builder()
           .setDomain("example.com") // Replace this with your website's domain.
           .addPathHandler("/assets/", new AssetsPathHandler(this))
           .build();

mWebView.setWebViewClient(new LocalContentWebViewClient(assetLoader));
String inAppHtmlUrl = "https://example.com/assets/index.html";
mWebView.loadUrl(inAppHtmlUrl);
String websiteUrl = "https://example.com/website/data.json";

// JavaScript code to fetch() content from the same origin.
String jsCode = "fetch('" + websiteUrl + "')" +
      ".then(resp => resp.json())" +
      ".then(data => console.log(data));";

mWebView.evaluateJavascript(jsCode, null);

See the WebView demo on GitHub for an example of an in-app HTML page fetching web-hosted JSON data.

loadDataWithBaseURL

When your app only needs to load an HTML page and doesn't need to intercept subresources, consider using loadDataWithBaseURL(), which doesn't require app assets. You can use it as shown in the following code sample:

Kotlin

val html = "
Hello world
"
val baseUrl = "https://example.com/"

webView.loadDataWithBaseURL(baseUrl, html, "text/html", null, baseUrl)

Java

String html = "
Hello world
";
String baseUrl = "https://example.com/";

mWebView.loadDataWithBaseURL(baseUrl, html, "text/html", null, baseUrl);

Choose argument values carefully. Consider the following:

  • baseUrl: this is the URL your HTML content is loaded as. This must be an HTTP(S) URL.
  • data: this is the HTML content you want to display, as a string.
  • mimeType: this must usually be set to text/html.
  • encoding: this is unused when baseUrl is an HTTP(S) URL, so it can be set to null.
  • historyUrl: this is set to the same value as baseUrl.

We strongly recommend using an HTTP(S) URL as the baseUrl, as this helps ensure your app complies with the same-origin policy.

If you can't find a suitable baseUrl for your content and prefer to use loadData(), you must encode the content with percent-encoding or Base64 encoding. We strongly recommend choosing Base64 encoding and using Android APIs to encode this programmatically, as shown in the following code sample:

Kotlin

val encodedHtml: String = Base64.encodeToString(html.toByteArray(), Base64.NO_PADDING)

webView.loadData(encodedHtml, mimeType, "base64")

Java

String encodedHtml = Base64.encodeToString(html.getBytes(), Base64.NO_PADDING);

mWebView.loadData(encodedHtml, mimeType, "base64");

Things to avoid

There are several other ways to load in-app content, but we strongly recommend against them:

  • file:// URLs and data: URLs are considered to be opaque origins, meaning they can't take advantage of powerful web APIs such as fetch() or XMLHttpRequest. loadData() internally uses data: URLs, so we encourage using WebViewAssetLoader or loadDataWithBaseURL() instead.
  • Although WebSettings.setAllowFileAccessFromFileURLs() and WebSettings.setAllowUniversalAccessFromFileURLs() can work around the issues with file:// URLs, we recommend against setting these to true because doing so leaves your app vulnerable to file-based exploits. We recommend explicitly setting these to false on all API levels for the strongest security.
  • For the same reasons, we recommend against file://android_assets/ and file://android_res/ URLs. The AssetsHandler and ResourcesHandler classes are meant to be drop-in replacements.
  • Avoid using MIXED_CONTENT_ALWAYS_ALLOW. This setting generally isn't necessary and weakens the security of your app. We recommend loading your in-app content over the same scheme—HTTP or HTTPS—as your website's resources and using MIXED_CONTENT_COMPATIBILITY_MODE or MIXED_CONTENT_NEVER_ALLOW, as appropriate.