I discovered and installed a firefox addon called Remote Control. This addon starts a telnet server which lets you send javascript commands to the firefox web browser. Combined with python telnetlib module, it becomes very easy to reload or change the content of a tab in a running firefox from a python script. Note that the addon manages only one tab at a time.
Load, reload a firefox tab from python.
#!/usr/bin/env python
# -*-coding: utf8-*-
# Title: remotecontrol.py
# Author: Gribouillis
# Created: 2012-02-03 14:51:45.755655 (isoformat date)
# License: Public Domain
# Use this code freely.
""" This module allows to change or reload the content of a tab in
a running firefox instance equiped with the Remote Control addon
(see https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/remote-control)
Notice that after installing the addon, you must install a
Remote Control icon in firefox add-on bar for this to work
(right click in the menubar and choose Customize).
See the example in the __main__ section below.
"""
import sys
import telnetlib
version_info = (0, 1)
version = ".".join(map(str, version_info))
class Control(object):
def __init__(self, port=32000):
self.host = 'localhost'
self.port = port
def reload(self):
tn = telnetlib.Telnet(self.host, self.port)
tn.write("reload\n")
result = tn.read_until('\n')
return result
def load(self, url):
tn = telnetlib.Telnet(self.host, self.port)
tn.write('window.location="%s"' % url)
result = tn.read_until('\n')
return result
if __name__ == "__main__":
"This part will run after selecting a tab for remote control in firefox"
from time import sleep
c = Control()
print c.load("http://www.python.org")
sleep(1)
print c.reload()
sleep(1)
print c.load("http://www.daniweb.com")
Gribouillis
1,391
Programming Explorer
Team Colleague
A slightly improved version with error handling, properly closed connection and a new href() method.
#!/usr/bin/env python
# -*-coding: utf8-*-
# Title: remotecontrol.py
# Author: Gribouillis
# Created: 2012-02-03 14:51:45.755655 (isoformat date)
# License: Public Domain
# Use this code freely.
""" This module allows to change or reload the content of a tab in
a running firefox instance equiped with the Remote Control add-on
(see https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/remote-control)
Notice that after installing the add-on, you must install a
Remote Control icon in firefox add-on bar for this to work
(right click in the menubar and choose Customize).
See the example in the __main__ section below.
"""
from functools import wraps
import socket
import sys
import telnetlib
version_info = (0, 2)
version = ".".join(map(str, version_info))
class RemoteControlError(Exception):
pass
def with_telnet(meth):
@wraps(meth)
def wrapper(self, *args, **kwd):
try:
self.tn = telnetlib.Telnet(self.host, self.port)
except socket.error, e:
raise RemoteControlError(str(e))
try:
return meth(self, *args, **kwd)
finally:
self.tn.close()
self.tn = None
return wrapper
class RemoteControl(object):
def __init__(self, port=32000):
self.host = 'localhost'
self.port = port
self.tn = None
@with_telnet
def reload(self):
self.tn.write("reload\n")
return self.tn.read_until('\n')
@with_telnet
def load(self, url):
self.tn.write("window.location='%s';\n" % url)
result = self.tn.read_until('\n')
return result
@with_telnet
def href(self):
self.tn.write('windows.location.href\n')
return self.tn.read_until('\n')
if __name__ == "__main__":
"This part will run after selecting a tab for remote control in firefox"
from time import sleep
duration = 2
c = RemoteControl()
print c.load("http://www.python.org")
sleep(duration)
print c.reload()
sleep(duration)
print c.load("http://www.daniweb.com")
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