I have an external application that is automating some tasks on a website. My goal is to implement a system which allows for the program and Chrome to synchronize cookies. While it is possible to query Chrome's cookie DB to read cookies, it is not possible to update the DB since Chrome maintains an I/O lock on the file, thus preventing easy synchronization.
The next logical step to me was to attempt to create an extension which will update cookies as necessary (through Chrome's cookie API). However, after about two days of research I have been unable to find an effective means to communicating cookie data between the browser and my application (which is written in Python.)
Sockets are out because it's for desktop based applications only. Websockets are out because as far as I can see it's impossible to setup a Websocket server using the HTML5 API (which is what I need since the browser needs to be the server and the program would be a connecting client). I'm really not sure what I am left with at this point. Is there something really obvious that I'm missing here? Any help is appreciated, cheers.
This feels like a very weird way to do whatever you're trying to do. Why are you doing this again?
Anyway, the most obvious solution is this:
You obviously have to secure communication between the app/plugin and the server. Again, this feels like a very weird way of doing stuff. But the solution will work. In this case both the app and the plugin are WS clients and your server is the arbiter.
Related
I have a C++ project for windows, using MiniBlink as embedded browser. (MiniBlink is a smaller Blink, which is close to chromium). I use this embedded browser to show responsive and nice looking dialogs with Quasar.js (wrapper for vue.js).
Problem:
Mostly a browser is just the passive backend. In my case, both the backend (project with embedded browser) and the frontend (dialog) are active and thus I need some communication. At the moment I use a local server to catch HTTP send from the frontend to the backend.
But is there a way to communicate from the backend to the frontend? At the moment I could only think about catching cookies or using a permanent loop in JS to send http queries to check for a possible response.
And is there no other way to send information to a backend? Everything is local, I dont need nor really want to send it into the network.
Thanks!
Idea 1: Use a local temp file to save on one side and read on other (can be also used both way)
Idea 2 (similar to question author solution): Local server with both side communication (GET/POST request into one side, text/json other way around)
Idea 3: Use launch parameter to pass though data directly into links for example: instead of using browserprocess.exe file.html, use browserprocess.exe file.html#showsomething
There are also other ways which like catching for example: checking window title of process with certain binary name from running tasks by other side; we didin't get good enough info about your background becouse you coud either use it in same process or other process, if thats same process you coud also just directly use variables both ways directly in code of miniblink and do action when they meet if statement
As CertainPerformance added as a comment, WebSockets might be the best way to go.
If one does not like to implement a websocket server, because a http server is already running, long polling requests might be the best workaround to simulate this behaviour.
Long polling: The client sends a request, which stays open as long as possible. If the server needs to communicate, it can use the open request to send its own "request" via response. It is a bit hacky, but essentially the idea behind websockets.
Mozilla has a nice article to help with websockets:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/WebSockets_API/Writing_WebSocket_servers
If you (like me) use vuejs or quasar, you might want have a look at vue-native-websocket.
https://github.com/nathantsoi/vue-native-websocket
Good luck
I'm trying to understand how does websocket work and I can't find any decent tutorial.
How can I work with websocket on a windows server? Does it require any extension and some PHP code? Is it a socket? or some sort of Comet new technology?
If I'm working on, for example, www.websocket.com/game/1.htm, and I want to have a websocket connection on this page, What url should I use?
Thanks
Read this: http://chimera.labs.oreilly.com/books/1230000000545/ch17.html
In the MS ecosystem there are several options for using WebSockets:
ASP.NET (requires that the server be windows 8 or 2012), can run in the same port than your web app: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/vstudio/system.net.websockets
XSocket.NET: http://xsockets.net/
SuperWebSocket : http://superwebsocket.codeplex.com/
Alchemy Websocket: http://alchemywebsockets.net/
WebSocketListener : https://github.com/vtortola/WebSocketListener
Actually there are not really requirements for a "PHP based websocket". In fact, the websocket is not really more than a simple "connection" as you always make. When you go to your url, in any way, you setup this "socket". Now the only goal you have to achieve is to make sure this connection does not "die".
This is simply achieved by setting a time limit on your script like so:
set_time_limit(0);
This means the script will never time-out while "connecting" to the URL. After that you simply do your stuff as in
new PHPWebSocket();
Then you can do what ever you want with it, while keeping a connection. This is just a short story, there are other ways but I suggest you read some more about websockets and how PHP can "handle" it.
Well, if you like to use WebSockets in Windows, the best choice is:
SignalR
It makes the development very simple, and it also works with browsers that don't support websockets yet, using normal AJAX long-polling, or Forever Frame, etc.
Take one example, study a litle, and you'll be able to make incredible real-time websites.
It's amazing, websockets are the future!
I'm developing an HTML5 game using javascript and canvas, and I wonder how to protect it from the firefox scratchpad or any other script injection tools like it.
If any user can run its own code in mine, I really don't see how to prevent him from calling the onWin() method or modify its score to 1 billion and so on.
That's such a huge security breach that I'm now thinking about re-code it in flash or java.
What do you think ?
Regards.
Here is what you need to do:
At server side you need to check only authorized user is able to
update any data in server.
So if any update request is coming to server from client before updating you need to make sure the client is authorized to do so.
We have an application which consumes a large amount of data. Currently a desktop app, but we would like to deliver it via the browser.
It doesn't make sense to me to create a web app where we need to transfer a ll the data used for the visualizations.
We're looking at RDP and some products out there that provide RDP access via a fully javascript client. They seem to work well with our app, but I've been thinking about what it would take to move off Windows.
Switching the front end so that it could run under Linux would not be trivial, but not impossible, so the main stumbling block would be delivery.
I was wondering if there are any X11 javascript servers out there, but have not found any leads.
Use xpra's builtin html5 client, it supports any application you can run on an X11 desktop.
You can use an HTML5 VNC viewer like https://github.com/kanaka/noVNC coupled with a VNC server like RealVNC
AFAIK, recent GTK has been ported to HTML5+Javascript in Gtk Broadway
And you could make your application a web application, for instance by using Wt, or by making it an HTTP server thru specialized HTTP server libraries like libonion, libmicrohttpd etc.
By using AJAX techniques (e.g. thru jquery) your application won't transmit all the display data to the browser at once (but only incrementally and only the actually shown data).
You might also consider fastcgi as a way to connect your application to some web server.
I know two, both at very infancy:
https://github.com/GothAck/javascript-x-server
and
https://github.com/ttaubert/x-server-js
Both need simple tcp-to-websockets proxy in front, but all X11 logic happen inside web page and all x11 objects exist and interact within browser (so it's not just remote framebuffer but real server)
You can ever run full Linux distribution in Web Browser, but that's require to run x86/ARM emulator and GNU/Linux inside it. It provides X server with possible web connection too.
For very simple applications you can use libgreattao toolkit and tao-network-client to connect to it. I'm the author of both project. The API isn't yet frozen, but it rather behaves stable. You can read about it here:
https://nintyfan.wordpress.com/2015/04/30/server-buildin-into-libgreattao-and-tao-network-client/
It can provide some problems with applications with a lot of data, because all elements must be send to client, when it were created, but instead we don't send full graphics(only icons is send) and user interface could be changed quickly. It also don't support mouse enter/leave/move events.
I must tell: do not download tarbar, but download version from svn.
Sounds like the easiest approach for you is to get xrdp, which is an RDP-server for X. Then you would use your RDP client to connect to it. I think Nomachine NX supports html directly now, but I'm not sure. There was talk of an html X2go-client, but I don't know anything about that either.
How does Stack Overflow show the answer added/edited message without a page reload?
Yes, I know it will happen with Ajax. So I opened Firebug in a browser to check it, to see whether any requests are coming in a particular interval of time.
But I don't see any request coming in Firebug.
Can we perform a request without it showing in Firebug?
Are there any other ideas behind this or is my concept totally wrong?
It appears to be using HTML 5 Web Sockets. They basically keep an open connection between the server and the client and, among many other things, allow the client to define event handlers to treat new data when received from the server.
Here you'll find some basic examples and concepts about WebSockets: Introducing WebSockets: Bringing sockets to the web.
The WebSocket specification defines an API establishing "socket"
connections between a web browser and a server. In plain words: There
is an persistent connection between the client and the server and both
parties can start sending data at any time.
There is also a live demo with server & client source code available.
You might also find the following question useful: How do real time updates work?
To add to Xavi's answer, if you want to get started with web sockets without having to understand all the internals, you might try out Pusher, a library for multiple platforms (including PHP) that makes push notifications on the web very straightforward.
I do not work for Pusher; it's just a product I've found very useful in the past. I've always used the free version for small personal projects, though I would probably pay if I ever used it on a larger application.