IOS - How to avoid keyboard from hiding when uiwebview reloads

hide, ios, iphone, keyboard, webview

Solution

So after a long research I found a way to do it, its not the best but it helped me a lot.

First use `DOM` to check if the webView firstResonder

- (BOOL)isWebViewFirstResponder
{
    NSString *str = [self.webView stringByEvaluatingJavaScriptFromString:@"document.activeElement.tagName"];
    if([[str lowercaseString]isEqualToString:@"input"]) {
        return YES;
    }
    return NO;
}

Then respond to `UIWebViewDelegate` method `shouldStartLoadWithRequest`, and return `NO` if `UIWebView` is first responder

- (BOOL)webView:(UIWebView *)webView shouldStartLoadWithRequest:(NSURLRequest *)request navigationType:(UIWebViewNavigationType)navigationType
{
    if([self isWebViewFirstResponder] &&
   navigationType != UIWebViewNavigationTypeFormSubmitted) {
        return NO;
    } else {
        return YES;
    }
}

Problem

I have a webview that loads a web chat client. As every chat, the page has a textfield to input text. The problem is that when the user opens the keyboard it is automatically hidden after a short time due to several ajax requests that are reloading the page. This becomes really annoying for the user as he or she can't input a complete sentence before the keyboard hides. I don't know why, this only happens in iPhone 4S and iPhone 5. In iPhone 4, 3GS, and Simulator everything works ok. I have tried to use shouldStartLoadWithRequest to catch the request and load it after the user hides the keyboard, but this ruins the chat session. I tried to "hang" the request with a Thread sleep in the same method, but it happens in the Main Thread so it freezes the entire application. Is there a way I can simply avoid the keyboard from hiding?

Original source