WebKit in PyQt - rendering web pages

In the 4.4 release of Qt bindings to WebKit have been added. WebKit is a web page rendering engine, that is used in Safari and Google Chrome. Qt bindings are also available in PyQt and in other languages. To get qt-webkit we need just Qt and PyQt 4.4 or newer. Linux users have to check if they have "qt-webkit" installed (if qt comes in several packages). After installing you should see "QWebView" in QtDesiger, in the "Display Widgets" section.

Here is a basic QWebView usage:

#!/usr/bin/env python

import sys
from PyQt4.QtCore import *
from PyQt4.QtGui import *
from PyQt4.QtWebKit import *

app = QApplication(sys.argv)

web = QWebView()
web.load(QUrl("http://google.pl"))
web.show()

sys.exit(app.exec_())

Sample result:

Functionality of the "browser" is currently low, but WebKit bindings provide a lot of goodies. The loaded page becomes QWebPage object, which has its own URL history - QWebHistory. Also QWebView can send some signals - page loading progress, link clicked in the web page and more.

Now we will make more functional example browser. We will use QtDesiger to make the UI containing buttons for: back, forward, stop and reload page, URL bar (QLineEdit) and QWebView. Here is the sample design (saved as httpWidget.ui):

Now we make a Python class from that UI:

pyuic4 httpWidget.ui > httpWidget.py

And we can code the rest:

Connect signals with slots
- QWebView signals (like page loading status, page title)
- Buttons signals
UI look configuration

Here is the final code for the UI we designed:

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
import sys

from PyQt4 import QtCore, QtGui
from httpWidget import Ui_HttpWidget

class httpWidget(QtGui.QWidget):
	def __init__(self, parent=None):
		super(httpWidget, self).__init__(parent)
		self.ui = Ui_HttpWidget()
		self.ui.setupUi(self)
		
		# set margins
		l = self.layout()
		l.setMargin(0)
		self.ui.horizontalLayout.setMargin(5)
		
		# set the default page
		url = 'http://google.pl'
		self.ui.url.setText(url)
		
		# load page
		self.ui.webView.setUrl(QtCore.QUrl(url))
		
		# history buttons:
		self.ui.back.setEnabled(False)
		self.ui.next.setEnabled(False)
		
		QtCore.QObject.connect(self.ui.back,QtCore.SIGNAL("clicked()"), self.back)
		QtCore.QObject.connect(self.ui.next,QtCore.SIGNAL("clicked()"), self.next)
		QtCore.QObject.connect(self.ui.url,QtCore.SIGNAL("returnPressed()"), self.url_changed)
		QtCore.QObject.connect(self.ui.webView,QtCore.SIGNAL("linkClicked (const QUrl&)"), self.link_clicked)
		QtCore.QObject.connect(self.ui.webView,QtCore.SIGNAL("urlChanged (const QUrl&)"), self.link_clicked)
		QtCore.QObject.connect(self.ui.webView,QtCore.SIGNAL("loadProgress (int)"), self.load_progress)
		QtCore.QObject.connect(self.ui.webView,QtCore.SIGNAL("titleChanged (const QString&)"), self.title_changed)
		QtCore.QObject.connect(self.ui.reload,QtCore.SIGNAL("clicked()"), self.reload_page)
		QtCore.QObject.connect(self.ui.stop,QtCore.SIGNAL("clicked()"), self.stop_page)
		
		QtCore.QMetaObject.connectSlotsByName(self)
	
	def url_changed(self):
		"""
		Url have been changed by user
		"""
		page = self.ui.webView.page()
		history = page.history()
		if history.canGoBack():
			self.ui.back.setEnabled(True)
		else:
			self.ui.back.setEnabled(False)
		if history.canGoForward():
			self.ui.next.setEnabled(True)
		else:
			self.ui.next.setEnabled(False)
		
		url = self.ui.url.text()
		self.ui.webView.setUrl(QtCore.QUrl(url))
		
	def stop_page(self):
		"""
		Stop loading the page
		"""
		self.ui.webView.stop()
	
	def title_changed(self, title):
		"""
		Web page title changed - change the tab name
		"""
		self.setWindowTitle(title)
	
	def reload_page(self):
		"""
		Reload the web page
		"""
		self.ui.webView.setUrl(QtCore.QUrl(self.ui.url.text()))
	
	def link_clicked(self, url):
		"""
		Update the URL if a link on a web page is clicked
		"""
		page = self.ui.webView.page()
		history = page.history()
		if history.canGoBack():
			self.ui.back.setEnabled(True)
		else:
			self.ui.back.setEnabled(False)
		if history.canGoForward():
			self.ui.next.setEnabled(True)
		else:
			self.ui.next.setEnabled(False)
		
		self.ui.url.setText(url.toString())
	
	def load_progress(self, load):
		"""
		Page load progress
		"""
		if load == 100:
			self.ui.stop.setEnabled(False)
		else:
			self.ui.stop.setEnabled(True)
		
	def back(self):
		"""
		Back button clicked, go one page back
		"""
		page = self.ui.webView.page()
		history = page.history()
		history.back()
		if history.canGoBack():
			self.ui.back.setEnabled(True)
		else:
			self.ui.back.setEnabled(False)
	
	def next(self):
		"""
		Next button clicked, go to next page
		"""
		page = self.ui.webView.page()
		history = page.history()
		history.forward()
		if history.canGoForward():
			self.ui.next.setEnabled(True)
		else:
			self.ui.next.setEnabled(False)

if __name__ == "__main__":
	app = QtGui.QApplication(sys.argv)
	myapp = httpWidget()
	myapp.show()
	sys.exit(app.exec_())

Save the code in a file in the same directory as the UI file, and run it (i used run.py):

python run.py

Sample result:

In the __init__ we set the default web page, and some margins for the widgets. Next we have some slots:

url_changed - user changed URL in QLineEdit - get it and load the page (validation still missing)
stop_page - stop button clicked, stop page loading
title_changed - QWebView sends page title, when the page is loaded, we can use it to set the window title
reload_page - reload button clicked, we reload the web page
link_clicked - a link on the web page has been clicked, we update the QLineEdit url
load_progress - if the progress is 100 we can disable the stop button
back - back button - go one URL back in the history
next - next button - go one URL next in the history

We implemented basic browser UI and features in "few" lines of code. Exploring qt-webkit docs you can read about many other features it contains. Note that browser plugins (and more) are supported from Qt 4.5 (and not 4.4).

Source code

Download browser source code.