PyFladesk Migration

Question

I wanted to contribute to the PyFladesk project. The objective is to have a function that receives a Flask's app and embeds it in a Qt desktop app.

I've already create a Pull Request on the main repository, individual commmits and changes can be viewed there

This was the initial version: 83 lines - 3 Classes - 1 Function - Uses PyQt4

import sys,webbrowser

from PyQt4.QtCore import QThread, QUrl,SIGNAL,QSize
from PyQt4.QtGui import QApplication,QMainWindow,QIcon
from PyQt4.QtWebKit import QWebView,QWebPage

# CONFIG
PORT = 5000
ROOT_URL = 'http://localhost:{}'.format(PORT)
WIDTH = 300
HEIGHT = 400
WINDOW_TITLE = "PyFladesk"
ICON = 'appicon.png'


# run flask on seperate theared
class FlaskThread(QThread):
    def __init__(self, application):
        QThread.__init__(self)
        self.application = application

    def __del__(self):
        self.wait()

    def run(self):
        self.application.run(port=PORT)


class MainWindow(QMainWindow):

    def __init__(self):
        QMainWindow.__init__(self)
        self.resize (WIDTH , HEIGHT)
        self.setWindowTitle(WINDOW_TITLE)
        self.webView = WebView(self)
        self.setCentralWidget(self.webView)



class WebView(QWebView):
    def __init__(self ,parent=None):
        super(WebView,self).__init__(parent)

    def dragEnterEvent(self,e):
        e.ignore()

    def dropEvent(self,e):
        e.ignore()

    def contextMenuEvent(self,e):
        pass

    # open links in default browser 
    # stolen from http://stackoverflow.com/a/3188942/1103397 :D
    def linkClicked(self,url): 
        webbrowser.open(url.toEncoded().data())


def provide_GUI_for(application):
    qtapp = QApplication(sys.argv)

    webapp = FlaskThread(application)
    webapp.start()

    qtapp.aboutToQuit.connect(webapp.terminate)

    mainWindow = MainWindow()
    # set app icon    
    mainWindow.setWindowIcon(QIcon(ICON))

    # prevent open urls in QWebView.
    mainWindow.webView.page().setLinkDelegationPolicy(QWebPage.DelegateAllLinks)
    mainWindow.webView.connect(mainWindow.webView, SIGNAL("linkClicked (const QUrl&)"), mainWindow.webView.linkClicked)

    mainWindow.webView.load(QUrl(ROOT_URL))
    mainWindow.show()

    return qtapp.exec_()


if __name__ == '__main__':
    from routes import app
    provide_GUI_for(app)

And this is the updated version: 50 lines - 1 Function - Uses PyQt 5.10.0

import sys
from PyQt5 import QtCore, QtWidgets, QtGui, QtWebEngineWidgets


def init_gui(application, port=5000, width=300, height=400,
            window_title="PyFladesk", icon="appicon.png"):

    ROOT_URL = 'http://localhost:{}'.format(port)

    # open links in browser from http://stackoverflow.com/a/3188942/1103397 :D
    # thanks to https://github.com/marczellm/qhangups/blob/cfed73ee4383caed1568c0183a9906180f01cb00/qhangups/WebEnginePage.py
    def link_clicked(url, typ, ismainframe):
        ready_url = url.toEncoded().data().decode()
        is_clicked = typ == QtWebEngineWidgets.QWebEnginePage.NavigationTypeLinkClicked
        is_not_internal = ROOT_URL not in ready_url
        if is_clicked and is_not_internal:
            QtGui.QDesktopServices.openUrl(url)
            return False
        return True

    def run_app():
        application.run(port=port, threaded=True)

    # Application Level
    qtapp = QtWidgets.QApplication(sys.argv)
    webapp = QtCore.QThread()
    webapp.__del__ = webapp.wait
    webapp.run = run_app
    webapp.start()
    qtapp.aboutToQuit.connect(webapp.terminate)

    # Main Window Level
    window = QtWidgets.QMainWindow()
    window.resize(width, height)
    window.setWindowTitle(window_title)
    window.setWindowIcon(QtGui.QIcon(icon))

    # WebView Level
    window.webView = QtWebEngineWidgets.QWebEngineView(window)
    window.setCentralWidget(window.webView)

    # WebPage Level
    page = QtWebEngineWidgets.QWebEnginePage()
    page.acceptNavigationRequest = link_clicked
    page.load(QtCore.QUrl(ROOT_URL))
    window.webView.setPage(page)

    window.show()

    return qtapp.exec_()

Some of my concerns are:

• Is it a good decision not to use classes at all?

• Is the code readable and maintainable?

• Are there any suggestions to improve it?

This was once review here

Answer 1

I’m not too found of putting it all into a single method as:

1. it seems to have too much responsibilities;
2. building some objects (QThread, QWebEnginePage) is really awkward when methods are reassigned.

I really like using default values for parameters instead of global constants, though.

Instead I’d go with an intermediate state where I’d use proper subclassing instead of methods assignment:

import sys
from PyQt5 import QtCore, QtWidgets, QtGui, QtWebEngineWidgets


class ApplicationThread(QtCore.QThread):
    def __init__(self, application, port=5000):
        super(ApplicationThread, self).__init__()
        self.application = application
        self.port = port

    def __del__(self):
        self.wait()

    def run(self):
        self.application.run(port=self.port, threaded=True)


class WebPage(QtWebEngineWidgets.QWebEnginePage):
    def __init__(self, root_url):
        super(WebPage, self).__init__()
        self.root_url = root_url

    def home(self):
        self.load(QtCore.QUrl(self.root_url))

    def acceptNavigationRequest(self, url, kind, is_main_frame):
        """open external links in browser and internal links in the regular webview"""
        # thanks to https://github.com/marczellm/qhangups/blob/cfed73ee4383caed1568c0183a9906180f01cb00/qhangups/WebEnginePage.py
        ready_url = url.toEncoded().data().decode()
        is_clicked = kind == self.NavigationTypeLinkClicked
        if is_clicked and self.root_url not in ready_url:
            QtGui.QDesktopServices.openUrl(url)
            return False
        return super(WebPage, self).acceptNavigationRequest(url, kind, is_main_frame)


def init_gui(application, port=5000, width=300, height=400,
             window_title="PyFladesk", icon="appicon.png", argv=None):
    if argv is None:
        argv = sys.argv

    # Application Level
    qtapp = QtWidgets.QApplication(argv)
    webapp = ApplicationThread(application, port)
    webapp.start()
    qtapp.aboutToQuit.connect(webapp.terminate)

    # Main Window Level
    window = QtWidgets.QMainWindow()
    window.resize(width, height)
    window.setWindowTitle(window_title)
    window.setWindowIcon(QtGui.QIcon(icon))

    # WebView Level
    webView = QtWebEngineWidgets.QWebEngineView(window)
    window.setCentralWidget(webView)

    # WebPage Level
    page = WebPage('http://localhost:{}'.format(port))
    page.home()
    webView.setPage(page)

    window.show()
    return qtapp.exec_()

Back to two classes and a few more lines, but subclassing really feels better here. I also removed assigning the web-view as a window attribute as I don't see the need.

Lastly, I added support for user-provided argv (for testing purposes), just in case; not sure if really needed.