UIWebView webViewDidStartLoad Sometimes Not Firing

Question

I have a UIWebView in my view controller and have set its delegate to the view controller via code (i.e. not through IB). I have also setup the appropriate delegate methods: shouldStartLoadWithRequest, webViewDidStartLoad, webViewDidFinishLoad and didFailLoadWithError.

In my view controller's viewDidLoad method I load an appropriate URL with this code:

[self.webView loadRequest:reqURL];

95% of the time everything works great and the page loads in the UIWebView object and displays as expected. Occasionally, however, the page doesn't load.

After stepping through my code I realized that on the times that it doesn't work the shouldStartLoadWithRequest delegate method fires, but webViewDidStartLoad doesn't.

Does anyone have any idea what's going on here? I couldn't find anything on Stack Overflow that specifically addressed this unique issue I'm having and am slowly reaching my breaking point. Thanks in advance!

Is there any condition at which you shouldStartLoadWithRequestimplementation doesn't return YES? — Cezar
Good point... I actually don't return YES in shouldStartLoadWithRequest and will update my code to do that. But even though I didn't have it returning YES it still loads the web content on the times it does work. — Art Geigel
Why it does work even though you didn't always return YES is something I don't really know. But I believe it might be a good lead to explain the inconsistent behavior. Anyway, can you share your implementation of shouldStartLoadWithRequest? — Cezar
Dude, you rock! I have been testing tons since you suggested I return YES and things are working perfectly. If you want to submit that as an answer I'll mark it as accepted. Thanks for your help. — Art Geigel
If this is the case and you forgot to put the return YES in than you should have been given a warning that says something like warning: control reaches end of non-void function did you not just look at the warning? — Popeye

Cezar Cezar · Accepted Answer · 2013-03-24T04:20:34

You should make sure that your shouldStartLoadWithRequest implementation returns YES for all conditions at which you need your webView to load.

UIWebView webViewDidStartLoad Sometimes Not Firing

1 Answers