python - How to "render" HTML with PyQt5's QWebEngineView

Question

How can I "render" HTML with with PyQt5 v5.6 QWebEngineView?

I have previously performed the task with PyQt5 v5.4.1 QWebPage, but it was suggested to try the newer QWebEngineView.

Here's that implementation (it generally works as expected, but has a tendency to hang indefinitely for some sites and situations):

def render(source_html):
    """Fully render HTML, JavaScript and all."""

    import sys
    from PyQt5.QtWidgets import QApplication
    from PyQt5.QtWebKitWidgets import QWebPage

    class Render(QWebPage):
        def __init__(self, html):
            self.html = None
            self.app = QApplication(sys.argv)
            QWebPage.__init__(self)
            self.loadFinished.connect(self._loadFinished)
            self.mainFrame().setHtml(html)
            self.app.exec_()

        def _loadFinished(self, result):
            self.html = self.mainFrame().toHtml()
            self.app.quit()

    return Render(source_html).html

import requests
sample_html = requests.get(dummy_url).text
print(render(sample_html))

What follows is my attempt at using QWebEngineView. First, the installation and setup of PyQt5 v5.6 on Ubuntu:

# install PyQt5 v5.6 wheel from PyPI
pip3 install --user pyqt5

# link missing resources
ln -s ../resources/icudtl.dat ../resources/qtwebengine_resources.pak ../resources/qtwebengine_resources_100p.pak ../resources/qtwebengine_resources_200p.pak ../translations/qtwebengine_locales ~/.local/lib/python3.5/site-packages/PyQt5/Qt/libexec/

Now for the Python... The following results in a segmentation fault:

def render(source_html):
    """Fully render HTML, JavaScript and all."""

    import sys
    from PyQt5.QtWidgets import QApplication
    from PyQt5.QtWebEngineWidgets import QWebEngineView

    class Render(QWebEngineView):
        def __init__(self, html):
            self.html = None
            self.app = QApplication(sys.argv)
            QWebEngineView.__init__(self)
            self.loadFinished.connect(self._loadFinished)
            self.setHtml(html)
            self.app.exec_()

        def _loadFinished(self, result):
            # what's going on here? how can I get the HTML from toHtml?
            self.page().toHtml(self.callable)
            self.app.quit()

        def callable(self, data):
            self.html = data

    return Render(source_html).html

import requests
sample_html = requests.get(dummy_url).text
print(render(sample_html))

The trouble appears to lie in the call to asynchronous toHtml(). It seems like it should be fairly simple, but I'm at a loss with what to do with it. I see it's been discussed in the context of C++, but I'm not sure how to translate this to Python. How can I get the HTML out?

Answer 1

Quite a bit of discussion on the topic was made in the following thread: https://riverbankcomputing.com/pipermail/pyqt/2015-January/035324.html

The new QWebEngine interface takes account of the fact that the underlying Chromium engine is asynchronous. As such we have to turn an asynchronous API into a synchronous one.

Here's how that looks:

def render(source_html):
    """Fully render HTML, JavaScript and all."""

    import sys
    from PyQt5.QtCore import QEventLoop
    from PyQt5.QtWidgets import QApplication
    from PyQt5.QtWebEngineWidgets import QWebEngineView

    class Render(QWebEngineView):
        def __init__(self, html):
            self.html = None
            self.app = QApplication(sys.argv)
            QWebEngineView.__init__(self)
            self.loadFinished.connect(self._loadFinished)
            self.setHtml(html)
            while self.html is None:
                self.app.processEvents(QEventLoop.ExcludeUserInputEvents | QEventLoop.ExcludeSocketNotifiers | QEventLoop.WaitForMoreEvents)
            self.app.quit()

        def _callable(self, data):
            self.html = data

        def _loadFinished(self, result):
            self.page().toHtml(self._callable)

    return Render(source_html).html

import requests
sample_html = requests.get(dummy_url).text
print(render(sample_html))