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Creating a tabbed browser using PyQt5

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In this article, we will see how we can create a tabbed browser using PyQt5.

Web browser is a software application for accessing information on the World Wide Web. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the web browser retrieves the necessary content from a web server and then displays the page on the screen.
Tabbing : Adding tabs complicates the internals of the browser a bit, since there will now need to keep track of the currently active browser view, both to update UI elements (URL bar) to changing state in the currently active window and to ensure the UI events are dispatched to the correct web view.
PyQt5 is cross-platform GUI toolkit, a set of python bindings for Qt v5. One can develop an interactive desktop application with so much ease because of the tools and simplicity provided by this library. It has been installed using the command given below 

pip install PyQt5

GUI Implementation steps : 
1. Create a main window 
2. Create a QTabWidget for tabbing, set it as central widget, make them documented and closable, below is how the tabs will look like 

3. Create a status bar to show the status tips 
4. Create a tool bar and add navigation button and the line edit to show the url, below is hot the tool bar will look like 

Back-End Implementation Steps : 
1. Add action to the QTabWidget object when double-clicked is pressed 
2. Inside the double click action check if the double click is on no tab then call the open tab method 
3. Inside the open tab, method create a QUrl object and the QWebEngineView object and set QUrl to it and get the index of the tab 
4. Add update url action to QWebEngineView object when url is changed. 
5. Inside the update, url action check if action is called by the opened tab then change the url of url bar and change cursor position 
6. Add another update title action to the QWebEngineView object when loading is finished 
7. Inside the update title method update the title of the window as the page title if the action is called by the open tab only 
8. Add action to the tabs when the tab is changed 
9. Inside the tab changed action get the url update the url inline edit and the title 
10. Add actions to the navigation buttons using the build-in functions of the QWebEngineView object for reloading, back, stop and forward buttons 
11. Add action to the home button and inside the action change the url to google.com 
12. Add action to the line edit when the return key is pressed 
13. Inside the line, edit action get the text and convert this text to the QUrl object and set the scheme if it is null and set this url to the current tab 
 

Below is the implementation  

Python3




# importing required libraries
from PyQt5.QtCore import *
from PyQt5.QtWidgets import *
from PyQt5.QtGui import *
from PyQt5.QtWebEngineWidgets import *
from PyQt5.QtPrintSupport import *
import os
import sys
 
# main window
class MainWindow(QMainWindow):
 
    # constructor
    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        super(MainWindow, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)
 
        # creating a tab widget
        self.tabs = QTabWidget()
 
        # making document mode true
        self.tabs.setDocumentMode(True)
 
        # adding action when double clicked
        self.tabs.tabBarDoubleClicked.connect(self.tab_open_doubleclick)
 
        # adding action when tab is changed
        self.tabs.currentChanged.connect(self.current_tab_changed)
 
        # making tabs closeable
        self.tabs.setTabsClosable(True)
 
        # adding action when tab close is requested
        self.tabs.tabCloseRequested.connect(self.close_current_tab)
 
        # making tabs as central widget
        self.setCentralWidget(self.tabs)
 
        # creating a status bar
        self.status = QStatusBar()
 
        # setting status bar to the main window
        self.setStatusBar(self.status)
 
        # creating a tool bar for navigation
        navtb = QToolBar("Navigation")
 
        # adding tool bar tot he main window
        self.addToolBar(navtb)
 
        # creating back action
        back_btn = QAction("Back", self)
 
        # setting status tip
        back_btn.setStatusTip("Back to previous page")
 
        # adding action to back button
        # making current tab to go back
        back_btn.triggered.connect(lambda: self.tabs.currentWidget().back())
 
        # adding this to the navigation tool bar
        navtb.addAction(back_btn)
 
        # similarly adding next button
        next_btn = QAction("Forward", self)
        next_btn.setStatusTip("Forward to next page")
        next_btn.triggered.connect(lambda: self.tabs.currentWidget().forward())
        navtb.addAction(next_btn)
 
        # similarly adding reload button
        reload_btn = QAction("Reload", self)
        reload_btn.setStatusTip("Reload page")
        reload_btn.triggered.connect(lambda: self.tabs.currentWidget().reload())
        navtb.addAction(reload_btn)
 
        # creating home action
        home_btn = QAction("Home", self)
        home_btn.setStatusTip("Go home")
 
        # adding action to home button
        home_btn.triggered.connect(self.navigate_home)
        navtb.addAction(home_btn)
 
        # adding a separator
        navtb.addSeparator()
 
        # creating a line edit widget for URL
        self.urlbar = QLineEdit()
 
        # adding action to line edit when return key is pressed
        self.urlbar.returnPressed.connect(self.navigate_to_url)
 
        # adding line edit to tool bar
        navtb.addWidget(self.urlbar)
 
        # similarly adding stop action
        stop_btn = QAction("Stop", self)
        stop_btn.setStatusTip("Stop loading current page")
        stop_btn.triggered.connect(lambda: self.tabs.currentWidget().stop())
        navtb.addAction(stop_btn)
 
        # creating first tab
        self.add_new_tab(QUrl('http://www.google.com'), 'Homepage')
 
        # showing all the components
        self.show()
 
        # setting window title
        self.setWindowTitle("Geek PyQt5")
 
    # method for adding new tab
    def add_new_tab(self, qurl = None, label ="Blank"):
 
        # if url is blank
        if qurl is None:
            # creating a google url
            qurl = QUrl('http://www.google.com')
 
        # creating a QWebEngineView object
        browser = QWebEngineView()
 
        # setting url to browser
        browser.setUrl(qurl)
 
        # setting tab index
        i = self.tabs.addTab(browser, label)
        self.tabs.setCurrentIndex(i)
 
        # adding action to the browser when url is changed
        # update the url
        browser.urlChanged.connect(lambda qurl, browser = browser:
                                   self.update_urlbar(qurl, browser))
 
        # adding action to the browser when loading is finished
        # set the tab title
        browser.loadFinished.connect(lambda _, i = i, browser = browser:
                                     self.tabs.setTabText(i, browser.page().title()))
 
    # when double clicked is pressed on tabs
    def tab_open_doubleclick(self, i):
 
        # checking index i.e
        # No tab under the click
        if i == -1:
            # creating a new tab
            self.add_new_tab()
 
    # when tab is changed
    def current_tab_changed(self, i):
 
        # get the curl
        qurl = self.tabs.currentWidget().url()
 
        # update the url
        self.update_urlbar(qurl, self.tabs.currentWidget())
 
        # update the title
        self.update_title(self.tabs.currentWidget())
 
    # when tab is closed
    def close_current_tab(self, i):
 
        # if there is only one tab
        if self.tabs.count() < 2:
            # do nothing
            return
 
        # else remove the tab
        self.tabs.removeTab(i)
 
    # method for updating the title
    def update_title(self, browser):
 
        # if signal is not from the current tab
        if browser != self.tabs.currentWidget():
            # do nothing
            return
 
        # get the page title
        title = self.tabs.currentWidget().page().title()
 
        # set the window title
        self.setWindowTitle("% s - Geek PyQt5" % title)
 
    # action to go to home
    def navigate_home(self):
 
        # go to google
        self.tabs.currentWidget().setUrl(QUrl("http://www.google.com"))
 
    # method for navigate to url
    def navigate_to_url(self):
 
        # get the line edit text
        # convert it to QUrl object
        q = QUrl(self.urlbar.text())
 
        # if scheme is blank
        if q.scheme() == "":
            # set scheme
            q.setScheme("http")
 
        # set the url
        self.tabs.currentWidget().setUrl(q)
 
    # method to update the url
    def update_urlbar(self, q, browser = None):
 
        # If this signal is not from the current tab, ignore
        if browser != self.tabs.currentWidget():
 
            return
 
        # set text to the url bar
        self.urlbar.setText(q.toString())
 
        # set cursor position
        self.urlbar.setCursorPosition(0)
 
# creating a PyQt5 application
app = QApplication(sys.argv)
 
# setting name to the application
app.setApplicationName("Geek PyQt5")
 
# creating MainWindow object
window = MainWindow()
 
# loop
app.exec_()


Output : 

 



Last Updated : 05 Nov, 2021
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