How can I get onclick event on webview in android?

I took a look at this and I found that a WebView doesn’t seem to send click events to an OnClickListener. If anyone out there can prove me wrong or tell me why then I’d be interested to hear it.

What I did find is that a WebView will send touch events to an OnTouchListener. It does have its own onTouchEvent method but I only ever seemed to get MotionEvent.ACTION_MOVE using that method.

So given that we can get events on a registered touch event listener, the only problem that remains is how to circumvent whatever action you want to perform for a touch when the user clicks a URL.

This can be achieved with some fancy Handler footwork by sending a delayed message for the touch and then removing those touch messages if the touch was caused by the user clicking a URL.

Here’s an example:

public class WebViewClicker extends Activity implements OnTouchListener, Handler.Callback {

private static final int CLICK_ON_WEBVIEW = 1;
private static final int CLICK_ON_URL = 2;

private final Handler handler = new Handler(this);

private WebView webView;
private WebViewClient client;

@Override
protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
    setContentView(R.layout.web_view_clicker);
    
    webView = (WebView)findViewById(R.id.web);
    webView.setOnTouchListener(this);

    client = new WebViewClient(){ 
        @Override public boolean shouldOverrideUrlLoading(WebView view, String url) { 
            handler.sendEmptyMessage(CLICK_ON_URL);
            return false;
        } 
    }; 
    
    webView.setWebViewClient(client);
    webView.setVerticalScrollBarEnabled(false);
    webView.loadUrl("http://www.example.com");
}

@Override
public boolean onTouch(View v, MotionEvent event) {
    if (v.getId() == R.id.web && event.getAction() == MotionEvent.ACTION_DOWN){
        handler.sendEmptyMessageDelayed(CLICK_ON_WEBVIEW, 500);
    }
    return false;
}

@Override
public boolean handleMessage(Message msg) {
    if (msg.what == CLICK_ON_URL){
        handler.removeMessages(CLICK_ON_WEBVIEW);
        return true;
    }
    if (msg.what == CLICK_ON_WEBVIEW){
        Toast.makeText(this, "WebView clicked", Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();
        return true;
    }
    return false;
}
}