Introduction

Electric WebView is a scriptable WebView for developers.

The WebView uses the QtWebEngine (which is based on Chromium) to render the HTML content. There is also a simple protocol to get data, send commands and listen for events: through Unix Socket, TCP or WebSocket. The window of WebView does not have any UI component what you see in a standard web browser like an address bar, status bar, navigation buttons, etc.

Use Cases

Web testing
- Browser automated testing done easy.
Page automation
- Access and manipulate web pages using DOM API.
Digital Signage
- Display Web content without distractions.
Kiosk Web Browser
- The users can only interact with a single web application.

Building

Before building Electric WebView you need to install GCC 6, Qt and QtWebEngine 5.6 on the system.

qmake PREFIX=/usr
make
make install

Usage

electric-webview

The WebView itself.

Usage: electric-webview [options]
Electric WebView is a scriptable WebView for developers.

Options:
  -h, --help                                  Displays this help.
  -v, --version                               Displays version information.
  -t, --transport <tcp|unixsocket|websocket>  Command Transport Layer to use.
  -r, --reverse <ID>                          Enable reverse mode. The ID is
                                              used to identify your session in
                                              the server.
  -s, --script <path>                         Script to run.

Example:

electric-webview -t unixsocket:/tmp/electric-webview

electric-webview-ctl

A utility to interact with the WebView.

Usage: electric-webview-ctl [options] command
Electric WebView is a scriptable WebView for developers.

Options:
  -h, --help                                  Displays this help.
  -v, --version                               Displays version information.
  -t, --transport <tcp|unixsocket|websocket>  Command Transport Layer to use.

Arguments:
  command                                     Command to execute. Pass "-" to
                                              read from stdin.

Example:

echo "open maximized" | electric-webview-ctl -t unixsocket:/tmp/electric-webview -

Transports

This section describes the available transports with their keywords, parameters, and semantics.

unixsocket:<filename>

Listens on using a UNIX domain stream socket for commands.

tcp:<host>:<port>

Listen on : using a TCP/IP connection for commands.

websocket:<host>:<port>

Listen on : using a WebSocket connection for commands.

Commands

Electric WebView reads commands from TCP, Unix Socket or WebSocket. Each command starts with the name of a command and is terminated by a newline. Empty line are interpreted as end of connection.

If the command starts with @ the command is marked as getter. See the [Getter commands][#Getter commands] for defails.

Due to the simplicity of the protocol, it is possible to interact with the WebView using the command-line utility GNU Netcat. However, there is electric-webview-ctl utility that can be used to interact with the WebView, so you don't need extra tools to interact with the WebView.

Simple example using the GNU Netcat utility to demonstrate how simple is the protocol:

echo "open maximized" | nc -U /tmp/electric-webview
echo "load http://github.com" | nc -U /tmp/electric-webview

In the below example a maximized window is open and the http://github.com is loaded.

See the Scripting section for details on how to use scripts.

Getter commands

Commands starting with @ are marked as getter.

Getter commands might be useful when you want to retrieve data from a Electric WebView instance.

Example:

URL=$(echo "@current_url" | electric-webview-ctl -t unixsocket:/tmp/electric-webview -)
echo "The current URL is $URL"

In the below example, the response is "http://github.com".

Note that if you replace @current_url with current_url in the below example, the response is empty because the command current_url is not marked as getter.

Command response

The response of a command may vary according the type of command. If the command is marked as getter, the response only contains the returned data from the command, otherwise it is not a getter command, the response is composed of the command name and returned data, separated by space.

Note that not all commands have a response.

Navigation

load <URL>
- Loads the specified URL.
stop
- Stops loading the document.
reload
- Reloads the current document.
back
- Loads the previous document in the list of documents built by navigating links.
forward
- Loads the next document in the list of documents built by navigating links.

Window

open <maximized|fullscreen>
- Open the window. If maximized is given, the window is open in maximized state, otherwise fullscreen is given, the window is open in fullscreen mode.
close
- Closes the window.

Content

set_html <string|file> <VALUE>
- Sets the content of the web page. If file is given, the VALUE is interpreted as a path to a file to load, otherwise string is given, the VALUE is used to set the content of the web page.
get_html <text|html>
- Retrieve the page's content formated as html or text.
exec_js <string|file> <VALUE>
- Run JavaScript code. If file is given, the VALUE is interpreted as a path to a file to load, otherwise string is given, the value VALUE is executed as JavaScript code.
inject_js <WORLD> <INJECTION_POINT> <string|file> <SOURCE>
- Injects JavaScript from SOURCE into WORLD at INJECTION_POINT. If file is given, the SOURCE is interpreted as a path to a file to load, otherwise string is given, the value SOURCE is executed as JavaScript code.
Possible values for WORLD:
- main
- application
- user
Possible values for INJECTION_POINT:
- document_creation
- document_ready
- deferred
For detailed information, please refer to Qt documentation

Events

subscribe <VALUE>
- Subscribe to specified event in VALUE.

Available events

url_changed
- This event is fired when the url chages.
title_changed
- This event is fired whenever the title changes.
load_started
- This event is fired when a page starts loading content.
load_finished
- This event is fired when a load of the page has finished.
info_message_raised <MESSAGE>
- This event is fired when a JavaScript program tries to print a info MESSAGE to the console.
warning_message_raised <MESSAGE>
- This event is fired when a JavaScript program tries to print a warning MESSAGE to the console.
error_message_raised <MESSAGE>
- This event is fired when a JavaScript program tries to print a error MESSAGE to the console.
user_activity <IDLE_TIME>
- This event is fired when the user interacts with the input system through keystrokes or mouse clicks. The IDLE_TIME is the milliseconds since the last user activity.

Electric WebView

idle_time
- Returns the idle time from the last user activity in milliseconds.
block_user_activity <true|false>
- If true is given, prevents the user activity with the page until false is given.
exec_cmd <sync|async> <COMMAND> [ARGUMENTS]
- Run a COMMAND on the system with the given ARGUMENTS. If async is given, the command will be started detached and the output will be ignored, otherwise sync is given, the execution is blocked until the command has finished and the output will be send in the response message.
quit [code]
- Tells the application to exit with a return code.

HTTP API

First of all, you must run the HTTP server, which is invoked with the following command:

$PREFIX/share/electric-webview/httpserver.py

Where $PREFIX is the prefix where you installed Electric WebView.

See HTTP API Endpoints for a list of all available endpoints.

Scripting

You can use scripts with Electric WebView loading the following Shell script library file:

$PREFIX/share/electric-webview/shellscript.sh