Get last loaded url of webview without doing a webView.goBack() in Android

Question

I want to log the history url or last loaded url without manually storing the history urls. Is that possible?

Solution

Found the answer in the docs ...

WebBackForwardList mWebBackForwardList = mWebView.copyBackForwardList();
String historyUrl = mWebBackForwardList.getItemAtIndex(mWebBackForwardList.getCurrentIndex()-1).getUrl();

Comments

[Torid]

onPageFinished tends to get called multiple times per page, particularly if there is redrawing (eg blinking cursors) or iframes. You could also shouldOverrideUrlLoading, which only gets called for a new URL, but that doesn't get called for iframes. So the best approach is to use a combination of use onPageFinished and shouldOverrideUrlLoading as described at stackoverflow.com/questions/3149216/…

[tarrant]

Yep, true. You'd have to see if the url was in the list already (at the zeroth position) and not add it in that case.

[Arnab Chakraborty]

I guess I didn't make myself clear, I don't want to manually save the urls. The webview does maintain a history stack, right? I just want to get the last loaded url.

[Adil Malik]

It works but there is a mistake. If you are on PageA then you go to PageB. Now when you press back button it takes you correctly back to pageA. But now if you press back button again, it will take you to PageB again because pageB was the previous page. So, it will loop between the two pages forever.

[Arnab Chakraborty]

In any case I wasn't using the history to navigate to pages, so it wouldnt be an issue in my case. I just needed it for logging purposes. Are you using the backForwardList to navigate? If so, why? Android browser would take care of that by default, wouldnt it?

[Adil Malik]

I had to implement a very simple browser. I used this instead: if(browser.canGoBack()){ browser.goBack() }else{ finish() } This worked fine for me.