SimpleWebKit

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SimpleWebKit

(for further editing)

  • originated in mySTEP
  • is completely written in Objective-C (1.0) so that it can be compiled on any system
  • aims at providing the most popular documented methods of Full WebKit for the classes WebView, WebFrame, WebDataSource, etc.
  • aims at rendering (X)HTML as good as possible (but not perfectly)
  • is work in heavy progress - so expect larger changes throughout the whole project
  • is used in the Vespucci Web Browser application for GNUstep

Status

Features of the code in SVN trunk:

  • parses (X)HTML into a DOM tree
  • renders approx. 50% of the HTML 4.0 tags in a reasonable way (e.g. < font color="#667788"> works)
  • makes <a> links clickable and processes them
  • is prepared to load <img>, <script> etc. and already loads them as subresources
  • is prepared to handle <frame>
  • is prepared to handle <form>
  • has a ECMAScript engine that parses 90% of the syntax and evaluates expressions (missing are Statements and the native Objects incl. "document", "window", "event" etc.)

Missing:

  • really display <img> tags
  • handle < table>, < ul> etc.
  • properly merge <script>
  • completion of ECMAScript engine
  • any CSS and <style> processing

Screenshots

Some first screen shots (made by linking against Apple AppKit&Foundation)

File:SimpleWebKit Example 1.png

How it Works

1. the WebView

  • is the master view object and there is only one per browser (or browser tab)
  • it holds the mainFrame which represents either the normal <body> or the top level <frame> or <frameset>
  • if there is a <frameset> hierarchy, there are additional child WebFrames

2. the WebFrame

  • is repsonsible for loading and rendering content from a specific URL
  • it uses a WebDataSource to trigger loading and get callbacks
  • it is also the owner of the DOMDocument tree
  • JavaScript statements are evaluated in a frame context
  • it is also the target of user clicks on links since it knows the base URL (through the WebDataSource)

3. the WebDataSource

  • is responsible for loading data from an URL
  • it may cache data and handle/synchronize loading fo subresources (e.g. for an embedded <img> tag)
  • it translates the request and the response URLs
  • it provides an estimated content length (for a progress indicator) and the MIMEType of the incoming data stream
  • as soon as the header comes in a WebDocomentRepresentation is created and incoming segments are notified
  • it also collects the incoming data, so that a WebDocomentRepresentation can handle either segments or the collected data

4. the WebDocumentRepresentation(s)

  • there is one for each MIME type (the WebView provides a mapping database)
  • it is responsible for parsing the incoming data stream (either completely when finished, or partially)
  • and provide a better suitable representation, e.g. an NSImage or a DOMHTMLTree
  • finally, it creates a WebDocumentView as the child of the WebView and attaches it to the WebFrame as the -webFrameView
  • so, if you want to handle an additional MIME type, write a class that conforms to the WebDocumentRepresentation protocol

5. the DOMHTMLTree

  • is only for HTML content
  • is (re)built each time a new segment of HTML data comes in
  • any change in the DOMHTMLTree is notified to the WebDocumentView (or one of its subviews) by setNeedsLayout

6. the WebDocumentView(s) an its subviews

  • are responsible for displaying the contents of its WebDataRepresentation
  • either HTML, Images, PDF or whatever (e.g. SVG, XML, ...)
  • they gets notified about changes either by updates of the WebDataSource (-dadaSourceUpdated:) or directly (-setNeedsLayout:)
  • if one needs layout, it must go to the DOM Tree to find out what has changed and update its size, content, children, layout etc.
  • this is a little tricky/risky since the -layout method is called within -drawRect: - so changing e.g. the View frame is very critical and may result in drawing glitches
  • for HTML, we do a simple trick: the WebDocumentView is an NSTextView and the DOMHTMLTree objects can be traversed to return an attributedString with embedded Tables and NSTextAttachments

7. the JavaScript engine

  • is programmed according to the specificaion of ECMA-262
  • uses a simple recursive stateless parser (could be optimized in stack useage and speed by a state-table driven approach)
  • parses the script into a Tree representation in a first step
  • then, evaluates the expressions and statements according to the current environement
  • this allows to store scripts in translated form and reevaluate them when needed (e.g. on mouse events)
  • uses Foundation for basic types (string, number, boolean, null)
  • uses WebScriptObject as the base Object representation
  • DOMObjects are a subclass of WebScriptObjects and therefore provide bridging, so that changing a DOMHTML tree element through JavaScript automativally triggers the appropriate WebDocumentView notification