[Bug]: Capacitor WebView treats URLs with dots as file requests, breaking SPA routing and page reload.

[iamriajul]

Capacitor Version

💊 Capacitor Doctor 💊

Installed Dependencies:

@capacitor/cli: 7.4.2
@capacitor/core: 7.4.2
@capacitor/android: 7.4.2
@capacitor/ios: 7.4.2

[success] iOS looking great! 👌
[success] Android looking great! 👌

Other API Details

Platforms Affected

• iOS
• Android
• Web

Current Behavior

When navigating to URLs that contain dots (.) in the path, Capacitor's WebView treats them as file requests rather than SPA routes. This causes a 404 error instead of serving the index.html file for client-side routing.

For example:

• http://localhost/@username → Works (serves index.html)
• http://localhost/@user.name → Fails (404 - treats as file request)
• http://localhost/page.section → Fails (404 - treats as file request)

And shows console error in Xcode:
⚡️ WebView failed provisional navigation
⚡️ Error: The file “@user.name” couldn’t be opened because there is no such file.

And in Android, An error page is shown with Page is not available.

Expected Behavior

All non-asset URLs should serve index.html to allow the SPA router to handle routing, regardless of whether the URL contains dots.

Project Reproduction

https://github.com/iamriajul/capacitor-dot-in-urls-spa-navigation-issue-reproduction

Additional Information

No response

[ionitron-bot]

This issue has been labeled as type: bug. This label is added to issues that that have been reproduced and are being tracked in our internal issue tracker.

[iamriajul]

Requesting @jcesarmobile for taking a look at the PR: fix: Capacitor WebView treats URLs with dots as file requests, breaking SPA routing and page reload. #8137

We're currently badly stuck with the issue in a production app. Would be very grateful if you can prioritize this PR to be merged and released a new version.