how to set up a simple browser that support javascript?

Question

I would like to setup a simple web browser that download a html page , parse it, generate a dom and execute the javascript code. I would like to know if there is a simple project(so not firefox which is good but too big to just understand this piece of logic) showing if it is the right way to handle this or someone to explain me if i am missing something. No particular language( but preferably be python, c#/c++/c ). I am stuck now at integrating the javascript engine, i don't know what to do.

Thx

• SLaks: Browsers are extremely complicated, for a reason.

Answer 1

I don't think its easy to pull off a javascript engine on your own. You could however use an open source engine (like WebKit's JS engine for example) and integrate it in your project.

More Infos:

http://www.webkit.org

• Dave: I was more thinking about using V8 ( because i mainly use python for this toy project and python binding seems to work well) rather than developping my own engine

Answer 2

google chrome is open source too with a neat javascript engine v8. http://code.google.com/chromium/ http://code.google.com/p/v8/

another way could be nodejs. it's server side javascript using the v8 engine. so there is no rendering, just pure javascript. maybe thats enough if you do not need the rendering. http://nodejs.org/

Answer 3

You might want to use the WebBrowser class from .NET for that purpose.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.windows.forms.webbrowser.aspx

• Dave: But this one doesn't show how to integrate a javascript engine . It is just doing the download, cookie management , etc.