A client's website has an auto-refresh feature which works great for desktop sites, but I'm making an iPhone app and need to disable it on the mobile version.

The code used is:

<META HTTP-EQUIV="REFRESH" CONTENT="30">

I would like to use javascript to disable it, if possible.

Thanks.

EDIT: I DO NOT have access to the HTML file, and therefore can't modify it. I need to do this via code on the Objective-C side in Xcode.

A client's website has an auto-refresh feature which works great for desktop sites, but I'm making an iPhone app and need to disable it on the mobile version.

The code used is:

<META HTTP-EQUIV="REFRESH" CONTENT="30">

I would like to use javascript to disable it, if possible.

Thanks.

EDIT: I DO NOT have access to the HTML file, and therefore can't modify it. I need to do this via code on the Objective-C side in Xcode.

• javascript
• html
• iphone
• refresh

Share Improve this question Follow edited Oct 15, 2015 at 18:26 Captain Obvlious 20.1k55 gold badges4848 silver badges8080 bronze badges asked Oct 19, 2011 at 21:17 iOSDeviOSDev 1,02844 gold badges1313 silver badges2121 bronze badges

Add a ment  | 

3 Answers 3

Sorted by: Reset to default 1

I will introduce something simple

Add meta tag with ID id="meta-refresh" like this:

 <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="2;http://new-url/" id="meta-refresh">

Just use these script..

 var iOS = false,
     p = navigator.platform;
 if( p === 'iPad' || p === 'iPhone' || p === 'iPod' ){//remove which is not your target
     iOS = true;
 }
 if(iOS){ // check if iOS then do the following
      var mr = document.getElementById("meta-refresh");
      mr.parentNode.removeChild(mr);
 }

I believe this will work..

Also, the initiated request which JavaScript can not disable once loaded!! For the same, the exact work around one can find in an Old Post answer given by user XP1

The above is using xmlhttp requrest (AJAX) to check before the document is loaded and remove the meta tag if the device is target device(iphone)

OR

one can use refresh dynamically id the device is not iPhone/iOS. that will remove the requirement of doing the dynamic check and requirement to avoid first refresh call. without using meta tag

 var iOS = false,
     p = navigator.platform;
 if( p === 'iPad' || p === 'iPhone' || p === 'iPod' ){//remove which is not your target
     iOS = true;
 }
 if(!iOS){
      window.setTimeout(function(){window.location.href=window.location.href},30000); //30 Seconds
 }

Assuming you are using a UIWebView to display the site, you could use [webView stringByEvaluatingJavaScriptFromString:@"..."];, where "..." is this javascript:

    var metaTags = document.getElementsByTagName("META");
    for(var i = 0; i < metaTags.length; i++) {
        if (metaTags[i].getAttribute("HTTP-EQUIV").match(/^REFRESH$/i))
            metaTags[i].parentNode.removeChild(metaTags[i]);
    }

Condensed down to one line for convenience:

var metaTags = document.getElementsByTagName("META"); for(var i = 0; i < metaTags.length; i++) { if (metaTags[i].getAttribute("HTTP-EQUIV").match(/^REFRESH$/i)) { metaTags[i].parentNode.removeChild(metaTags[i]);}}

Edit: Well...after all that, turns out it's not possible to cancel an existing refresh request by simply removing the meta tag from the document. Once the parser sees the meta tag, it will refresh regardless of any javascript trickery you do. Unfortunately, the only way to overe this is to modify the HTML page directly.

short answer: window.location.reload = () => {}

longer answer: most browsers support some modification of a function that refreshes a web page. the one here was tested on Chrome.

Disclaimer: this will remove the page reloading functionality entirely for a given page.