With MBPython you can embed a web browser control based on Chromium in a Python application. You can also use it to create a HTML 5 based GUI in an application that can act as a replacement for standard GUI toolkits such as wxWidgets, Qt or GTK. With this tutorial you will learn MBPython basics. This tutorial will discuss the three featured examples:

test_mbpython.py, test_bindwindow.py and test_bindwebview.py.

You can install with pip. Alternatively you can download packages for offline installation from QQ-Group.

Run the commands below to install the MBPython package, clone the repository and run the test_mbpython example:

pip install --user MBPython
git clone https://github.com/lochen88/MBPython.git
cd MBPython/tests/
python test_mbpython.py

The test_mbpython.py example is the most basic example. It doesn't depend on any third party GUI framework. It creates a browser widget without providing any window information (parent window is not specified), thus Miniblink automatically takes care of creating a top-level window, and in that window a Chromium widget is being embedded. When creating the browser, the "url" parameter is specified, which causes the browser to initially navigate to Baidu website. Let's analyze the code from that example:

1. from MBPython import miniblink - Import the miniblink module
2. wke.init('node.dll') - Initialize Miniblink. This function must be called somewhere in the beginning of your code. It must be called before any application window is created. It must be called only once during app's lifetime.
3. window.wkeCreateWebWindow(0,0,0,0,860,760) - Create a browser, this function returns a Browser object.
4. window.wkeRunMessageLoop() - Run Miniblink message loop. Message loop is a programming construct that waits for and dispatches events or messages in a program. All desktop GUI programs must run some kind of message loop. The test_mbpython.py example doesn't depend on any third party GUI framework and thus can run Miniblink message loop directly by calling window.wkeRunMessageLoop(). However in other examples that embed Miniblink browser with GUI frameworks such as Qt/wxPython/Tkinter you can't call window.wkeRunMessageLoop(), because these frameworks run a message loop of its own.

In the free version of Miniblink, Python and Javascript just can communicate sync.

In test_bindwindow.py and test_bindwebview.py example you will find

example usage of javascript bindings, javascript callbacks and python callbacks. Here is part of its source code:

def test_js_run_py(**kwargs):
    es=kwargs['es']
    param=kwargs['param']
    arg_count=jsrunpy.mb.jsArgCount(es)
    val_ls=jsrunpy.get_js_args_val(es,arg_count)
    print(val_ls,'test_js_run_py')

    hwnd=param
    if val_ls[0]=='move':
        user32.ReleaseCapture()
        user32.SendMessageW(hwnd,161, 2, 0)
    elif val_ls[0]=='close':
        win32gui.PostQuitMessage(0)
    elif val_ls[0]=='max':
        ismax=user32.IsZoomed(hwnd)
        if ismax==0:
            user32.ShowWindow(hwnd,3)
        elif ismax==1:
            user32.ShowWindow(hwnd,1)
    elif val_ls[0]=='min':
        user32.ShowWindow(hwnd,2)
    elif val_ls[0]=='menu':
        return jsrunpy.to_js_args_val(es,'点击菜单')
    elif val_ls[0]=='loadurl':
        pyrunjs.run_js(webview,'alert("create new window")')
        j_webview=window.wkeCreateWebWindow(0,0,0,360,480)
        network.wkeLoadURLW(j_webview,'https://www.baidu.com/')
        window.wkeShowWindow(j_webview)
    return 0

Miniblink supports NPAPI plugins.

Off-screen rendering, in short OSR, also known as windowless rendering, is a method of rendering pages into a memory buffer without creating an actual visible window. This method of rendering has its uses, some pluses and some minuses. Its main use is so that web page rendering can be integrated into apps that have its own rendering systems and they can draw web browser contents only if they are provided a pixel buffer to draw. MBPython provides test_bindwebview.py example of integrating Miniblink off-screen rendering with frameworks.

• Api-index