This Flutter blog will go through Google’s URL launcher plugin as well as a third-party plugin called Flutter WebView Plugin. These plugins basically allow us to interact with web pages and HTML content. We can use the URL launcher to open a URL in a browser on both iOS and Android, as well as embed it in a WebView on either platform. Using various URL schemes, the URL launcher may also generate intents to open email clients, phone clients, and messaging clients. You can learn more about Flutter URL launcher from the best Flutter training center in Kerala.

The URL launcher plugin use a function called canLaunch to determine whether the device is capable of handling the URL scheme. This function will return false if you try to open a phone number scheme on a tablet, for instance. We can then notify the program how we want it to handle opening the URL. We must do this by allowing it to access the URL within the app using the WebView API on Android and the iOS UIWebView. Android opens URLs in a browser by default, but iOS opens them in the application; by altering this behavior with the URL launcher, we can make it similar across the two platforms. The disadvantage of using the URL launcher to open a WebView is that we must alter the WebView client from native code to allow it to access certain functionalities.

In fact, the Flutter WebView Plugin provides a solution that allows us to interact directly with the native WebView plugins on both iOS and Android. We allow JavaScript, caching, and local storage straight from our flutter layer, eliminating the need to alter native code. The Flutter WebView Plugin also includes several useful enhancements, such as a zoom widget and the ability to customize how our application scheme is displayed to the end user. With this plugin, we can develop a variety of widgets that reside on top of the original WebView.

This is all about WebView in Flutter. You can opt to a Flutter course in Kochi and build your career as a mobile app developer in Flutter.

Author: STEPS