[SOLVED] QtWebEngine headless?

ThatDude

I'm trying to use QWebEnginePage to grab some online content. I don't care about any GUI/visualisations just to extract pure data from HTML
alas my console app crashes in QtWebEngine::initialize() on QOpenGLContext::create()

AFAIK it is completely separate from QT and despite its module name 'webenginewidgets' it should not require any Qt Widgets the same way as WebKit does, right?

Windows 7, 64 bit
Qt 5.4 64 bit
MSVS2013 64 bit

QT += core webenginewidgets
QT -= gui
TARGET = contest
CONFIG += console
CONFIG -= app_bundle
TEMPLATE = app
SOURCES += main.cpp

Everything works fine until I add
QWebEnginePage page;
page.load(QUrl("http://www.google.com"));

and the it starts crashing on the very first line
QCoreApplication a(argc, argv);

with
c:\work\build\qt5_workdir\w\s\qtbase\src\gui\kernel\qopenglcontext.cpp:596: error: Exception at 0x7fedf0d3142, code: 0xc0000005: read access violation at: 0x0, flags=0x0

QWebEngine examples work fine - both QML and C++ based but they are GUI apps
Where can I find any documentation about QWebEngine requirements - GUI App, OpenGL version
HTH

SGaist

Hi,

widgets here doesn't mean it needs QWidget (you can see that QtWebEnginePage is a QObject) however it probably expects either a QGuiApplication or a QApplication to work.

ckakman

If you don't show() any QWidget, you can have a QApplication without any UI.

Create a QWidget project but remove the
@
QWidget w;
w.show();
@

lines from main() and you are good to go.

ThatDude

Thanks guys
I figured it out but instead of starting with QWidget project I started with Console project and switched from QCoreApplication to QApplication.

Can you point me to the right documentation, help pages etc. explaining this i.e. why it is not working with QCoreApplication?

and now I'm facing different problem - I can't get page source using page->toHtml() on loadFinished()
none of the 3 examples (functor, lambda, template) seem to work (of course in console app I don't have textEdit controls so I use QString instead) - all I get is an empty string.

Again any documentation/examples how to get web page source code into class member variable?

SGaist

Because QCoreApplication is not meant to be used for GUI application there's QGuiApplication and QApplication for that. It's on the first line of it's "documentation":http://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qcoreapplication.html page

Are you running an event loop to use signals and slots ?

ThatDude

Yes I'm running an event loop.
and I receive loadFinished() signal
I tried all 3 proposed methods
the only difference is that I try to read the HTML in a class member variable

ThatDude

Thanks to SGaist's suggestion I've solved it.

I was unintentionally blocking main event loop at a different place in my code
although I was calling QApplication::processEvents();
obviously not quite often.

SGaist

You're welcome !

Were you using a busy loop ?

ThatDude

Yes I was using a busy loop calling QApplication::processEvents(); once in a while

To summarize:

Yes you can run QtWebEngine headless/in console but it requires QApplication and won't work with QCoreApplicaion
Much alike WebKit it requires quite frequently access to main event loop i.e. do not block it for extensive periods of time
I'm not sure if toHtml() shows original/loaded Html or 'generated' Html (after some time javascript usually alters original Html) and which Blink engine version is used (it could be rather old) but it doesn't render google's results properly.
I need to investigate... any pointers, documentation...