Question

This plugin provides a web browser view that displays when calling cordova.InAppBrowser.open().

var ref = cordova.InAppBrowser.open('http://apache.org', '_blank', 'location=yes');

The cordova.InAppBrowser.open() function is defined to be a drop-in replacement for the window.open() function. Existing window.open() calls can use the InAppBrowser window, by replacing window.open:

window.open = cordova.InAppBrowser.open;

The InAppBrowser window behaves like a standard web browser, and can't access Cordova APIs. For this reason, the InAppBrowser is recommended if you need to load third-party (untrusted) content, instead of loading that into the main Cordova webview. The InAppBrowser is not subject to the whitelist, nor is opening links in the system browser.

The InAppBrowser provides by default its own GUI controls for the user (back, forward, done).

For backwards compatibility, this plugin also hooks window.open. However, the plugin-installed hook of window.open can have unintended side effects (especially if this plugin is included only as a dependency of another plugin). The hook of window.open will be removed in a future major release. Until the hook is removed from the plugin, apps can manually restore the default behaviour:

delete window.open // Reverts the call back to it's prototype's default

Although window.open is in the global scope, InAppBrowser is not available until after the deviceready event.

document.addEventListener("deviceready", onDeviceReady, false);
function onDeviceReady() {
    console.log("window.open works well");
}

Report issues with this plugin on the Apache Cordova issue tracker

Installation

cordova plugin add cordova-plugin-inappbrowser

If you want all page loads in your app to go through the InAppBrowser, you can simply hook window.open during initialization. For example:

document.addEventListener("deviceready", onDeviceReady, false);
function onDeviceReady() {
    window.open = cordova.InAppBrowser.open;
}

cordova.InAppBrowser.open

Opens a URL in a new InAppBrowser instance, the current browser instance, or the system browser.

var ref = cordova.InAppBrowser.open(url, target, options);

• ref: Reference to the InAppBrowser window. (InAppBrowser)

• url: The URL to load (String). Call encodeURI() on this if the URL contains Unicode characters.

• target: The target in which to load the URL, an optional parameter that defaults to _self. (String)

  • _self: Opens in the Cordova WebView if the URL is in the white list, otherwise it opens in the InAppBrowser.
  • _blank: Opens in the InAppBrowser.
  • _system: Opens in the system's web browser.

• options: Options for the InAppBrowser. Optional, defaulting to: location=yes. (String)

  The options string must not contain any blank space, and each feature's name/value pairs must be separated by a comma. Feature names are case insensitive. All platforms support the value below:

  • location: Set to yes or no to turn the InAppBrowser's location bar on or off.

  Android only:

  • hidden: set to yes to create the browser and load the page, but not show it. The loadstop event fires when loading is complete. Omit or set to no (default) to have the browser open and load normally.
  • clearcache: set to yes to have the browser's cookie cache cleared before the new window is opened
  • clearsessioncache: set to yes to have the session cookie cache cleared before the new window is opened
  • zoom: set to yes to show Android browser's zoom controls, set to no to hide them. Default value is yes.
  • hardwareback: set to yes to use the hardware back button to navigate backwards through the InAppBrowser's history. If there is no previous page, the InAppBrowser will close. The default value is yes, so you must set it to no if you want the back button to simply close the InAppBrowser.
  • mediaPlaybackRequiresUserAction: Set to yes to prevent HTML5 audio or video from autoplaying (defaults to no).

  iOS only:

  • closebuttoncaption: set to a string to use as the Done button's caption. Note that you need to localize this value yourself.
  • disallowoverscroll: Set to yes or no (default is no). Turns on/off the UIWebViewBounce property.
  • hidden: set to yes to create the browser and load the page, but not show it. The loadstop event fires when loading is complete. Omit or set to no (default) to have the browser open and load normally.
  • clearcache: set to yes to have the browser's cookie cache cleared before the new window is opened
  • clearsessioncache: set to yes to have the session cookie cache cleared before the new window is opened
  • toolbar: set to yes or no to turn the toolbar on or off for the InAppBrowser (defaults to yes)
  • enableViewportScale: Set to yes or no to prevent viewport scaling through a meta tag (defaults to no).
  • mediaPlaybackRequiresUserAction: Set to yes to prevent HTML5 audio or video from autoplaying (defaults to no).
  • allowInlineMediaPlayback: Set to yes or no to allow in-line HTML5 media playback, displaying within the browser window rather than a device-specific playback interface. The HTML's video element must also include the webkit-playsinline attribute (defaults to no)
  • keyboardDisplayRequiresUserAction: Set to yes or no to open the keyboard when form elements receive focus via JavaScript's focus() call (defaults to yes).
  • suppressesIncrementalRendering: Set to yes or no to wait until all new view content is received before being rendered (defaults to no).
  • presentationstyle: Set to pagesheet, formsheet or fullscreen to set the presentation style (defaults to fullscreen).
  • transitionstyle: Set to fliphorizontal, crossdissolve or coververtical to set the transition style (defaults to coververtical).
  • toolbarposition: Set to top or bottom (default is bottom). Causes the toolbar to be at the top or bottom of the window.

  Windows only:

  • hidden: set to yes to create the browser and load the page, but not show it. The loadstop event fires when loading is complete. Omit or set to no (default) to have the browser open and load normally.
  • fullscreen: set to yes to create the browser control without a border around it. Please note that if location=no is also specified, there will be no control presented to user to close IAB window.

Supported Platforms

• Amazon Fire OS
• Android
• BlackBerry 10
• Firefox OS
• iOS
• Windows 8 and 8.1
• Windows Phone 7 and 8
• Browser

Example

var ref = cordova.InAppBrowser.open('http://apache.org', '_blank', 'location=yes');
var ref2 = cordova.InAppBrowser.open(encodeURI('http://ja.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ハングル'), '_blank', 'location=yes');

Firefox OS Quirks

As plugin doesn't enforce any design there is a need to add some CSS rules if opened with target='_blank'. The rules might look like these

.inAppBrowserWrap {
  background-color: rgba(0,0,0,0.75);
  color: rgba(235,235,235,1.0);
}
.inAppBrowserWrap menu {
  overflow: auto;
  list-style-type: none;
  padding-left: 0;
}
.inAppBrowserWrap menu li {
  font-size: 25px;
  height: 25px;
  float: left;
  margin: 0 10px;
  padding: 3px 10px;
  text-decoration: none;
  color: #ccc;
  display: block;
  background: rgba(30,30,30,0.50);
}
.inAppBrowserWrap menu li.disabled {
    color: #777;
}

Windows Quirks

Windows 8.0, 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.1 don't support remote urls to be opened in the Cordova WebView so remote urls are always showed in the system's web browser if opened with target='_self'.

On Windows 10 if the URL is NOT in the white list and is opened with target='_self' it will be showed in the system's web browser instead of InAppBrowser popup.

Similar to Firefox OS IAB window visual behaviour can be overridden via inAppBrowserWrap/inAppBrowserWrapFullscreen CSS classes

Browser Quirks

• Plugin is implemented via iframe,

• Navigation history (back and forward buttons in LocationBar) is not implemented.

InAppBrowser

The object returned from a call to cordova.InAppBrowser.open.

Methods

• addEventListener
• removeEventListener
• close
• show
• executeScript
• insertCSS

InAppBrowser.addEventListener

Adds a listener for an event from the InAppBrowser.

ref.addEventListener(eventname, callback);

• ref: reference to the InAppBrowser window (InAppBrowser)

• eventname: the event to listen for (String)

  • loadstart: event fires when the InAppBrowser starts to load a URL.
  • loadstop: event fires when the InAppBrowser finishes loading a URL.
  • loaderror: event fires when the InAppBrowser encounters an error when loading a URL.
  • exit: event fires when the InAppBrowser window is closed.

• callback: the function that executes when the event fires. The function is passed an InAppBrowserEvent object as a parameter.

InAppBrowserEvent Properties

• type: the eventname, either loadstart, loadstop, loaderror, or exit. (String)

• url: the URL that was loaded. (String)

• code: the error code, only in the case of loaderror. (Number)

• message: the error message, only in the case of loaderror. (String)

Supported Platforms

• Amazon Fire OS
• Android
• iOS
• Windows 8 and 8.1
• Windows Phone 7 and 8
• Browser

Browser Quirks

loadstart and loaderror events are not being fired.

Quick Example

var ref = cordova.InAppBrowser.open('http://apache.org', '_blank', 'location=yes');
ref.addEventListener('loadstart', function(event) { alert(event.url); });

InAppBrowser.removeEventListener

Removes a listener for an event from the InAppBrowser.

ref.removeEventListener(eventname, callback);

• ref: reference to the InAppBrowser window. (InAppBrowser)

• eventname: the event to stop listening for. (String)

  • loadstart: event fires when the InAppBrowser starts to load a URL.
  • loadstop: event fires when the InAppBrowser finishes loading a URL.
  • loaderror: event fires when the InAppBrowser encounters an error loading a URL.
  • exit: event fires when the InAppBrowser window is closed.

• callback: the function to execute when the event fires. The function is passed an InAppBrowserEvent object.

Supported Platforms

• Amazon Fire OS
• Android
• iOS
• Windows 8 and 8.1
• Windows Phone 7 and 8
• Browser

Quick Example

var ref = cordova.InAppBrowser.open('http://apache.org', '_blank', 'location=yes');
var myCallback = function(event) { alert(event.url); }
ref.addEventListener('loadstart', myCallback);
ref.removeEventListener('loadstart', myCallback);

InAppBrowser.close

Closes the InAppBrowser window.

ref.close();

• ref: reference to the InAppBrowser window (InAppBrowser)

Supported Platforms

• Amazon Fire OS
• Android
• Firefox OS
• iOS
• Windows 8 and 8.1
• Windows Phone 7 and 8
• Browser

Quick Example

var ref = cordova.InAppBrowser.open('http://apache.org', '_blank', 'location=yes');
ref.close();

InAppBrowser.show

Displays an InAppBrowser window that was opened hidden. Calling this has no effect if the InAppBrowser was already visible.

ref.show();

• ref: reference to the InAppBrowser window (InAppBrowser)

Supported Platforms

• Amazon Fire OS
• Android
• iOS
• Windows 8 and 8.1
• Browser

Quick Example

var ref = cordova.InAppBrowser.open('http://apache.org', '_blank', 'hidden=yes');
// some time later...
ref.show();

InAppBrowser.executeScript

Injects JavaScript code into the InAppBrowser window

ref.executeScript(details, callback);

• ref: reference to the InAppBrowser window. (InAppBrowser)

• injectDetails: details of the script to run, specifying either a file or code key. (Object)

  • file: URL of the script to inject.
  • code: Text of the script to inject.

• callback: the function that executes after the JavaScript code is injected.

  • If the injected script is of type code, the callback executes with a single parameter, which is the return value of the script, wrapped in an Array. For multi-line scripts, this is the return value of the last statement, or the last expression evaluated.

Supported Platforms

• Amazon Fire OS
• Android
• iOS
• Windows 8 and 8.1
• Browser

Quick Example

var ref = cordova.InAppBrowser.open('http://apache.org', '_blank', 'location=yes');
ref.addEventListener('loadstop', function() {
    ref.executeScript({file: "myscript.js"});
});

Browser Quirks

• only code key is supported.

Windows Quirks

Due to MSDN docs the invoked script can return only string values, otherwise the parameter, passed to callback will be [null].

InAppBrowser.insertCSS

Injects CSS into the InAppBrowser window.

ref.insertCSS(details, callback);

• ref: reference to the InAppBrowser window (InAppBrowser)

• injectDetails: details of the script to run, specifying either a file or code key. (Object)

  • file: URL of the stylesheet to inject.
  • code: Text of the stylesheet to inject.

• callback: the function that executes after the CSS is injected.

Supported Platforms

• Amazon Fire OS
• Android
• iOS
• Windows

Quick Example

var ref = cordova.InAppBrowser.open('http://apache.org', '_blank', 'location=yes');
ref.addEventListener('loadstop', function() {
    ref.insertCSS({file: "mystyles.css"});
});