Opening a website frame or image in python

Question

So i am fairly fluent with python and have used urllib2 and Cookies a lot for website automation. I just stumbled upon the "webbrowser" module which can open a url in your default browser. Im wondering if its possible to select just one object from that url and open that up. Specifically i want to open a "captcha" so that the user can input it, and continue doing something else.

this is line containing the captcha in the html, i think:

script type="text/javascript" src="http://api.recaptcha.net/challenge?k=6LcZ-AAAAAAAANX-xwVtzow1f4RpSrbSViRUx9Js"&gt;&lt;/script&gt;    <input type="submit" name="submitBtn" value="Submit" 

and clicking on that api link opens this:

var RecaptchaState = {
    site : '6LcZ-AAAAAAAANX-xwVtzow1f4RpSrbSViRUx9Js',
    challenge : '03AHJ_VuvoUHPdfoXLsVHGa7a26GR9s9Y5dkyKmqk2XsJ1SdiwF_2u0SV_sKnr1artkpc-5MjUe7SYD40xr7sAyvikKwpFCQTBdKUFfl76UP6EbDhezoTC8B1X8fjixuIJ4wJhI6yTc8vlX4ioh6je9lwFbPXllbGh2w',
    is_incorrect : false,
    programming_error : '',
    error_message : '',
    server : 'http://www.google.com/recaptcha/api/',
    timeout : 18000
};

document.write('<scr'+'ipt type="text/javascript" s'+'rc="' + RecaptchaState.server + 'js/recaptcha.js"></scr'+'ipt>');

any info would help with this.

Answer 1

It's not possible with the webbrowser module. All webbrowser does is provide a simple way to identify the default web browser and feed a URL to it.

If you want to render just a portion of a page, you need something that can either take arbitrary HTML fragments or can inject some Javascript after loading a page to strip out the unwanted elements.

For that, what you need is to build a purpose-specific web browser that's nothing more than a dialog box containing a web widget.

That can be done using any of the following combinations of libraries:

• PyQt and the included QtWebKit (GPL or Commercial, Windows/Mac/Linux)
• PySide and the included QtWebKit (LGPL, Linux)
• PyGTK and PyWebKitGTK (LGPL, Easy on Linux... no clue about Windows or OSX)
• PyGTK and GTKMozEmbed (LGPL, Easy on Linux... no clue about Windows or OSX)
• wxPython and the included wxIEHtmlWindow (BSD-like, Windows-only. Embeds Internet Explorer.)
• wxPython and the included wxWebKitCtrl (BSD-like, OSX-only)
• wxPython and wxWebKit (BSD-like, Windows/Mac/Linux)

My advice:

• If GPL licensing is OK, use PyQt.
• If GPL licensing isn't OK:
  • For Linux, use PySide or PyGTK with PyWebKitGTK (GTKMozEmbed is heavy)
  • For Windows, use wxPython with wxIEHtmlWindow
  • For OSX, you'll have to ask someone else.