rstudio/chromote

Expose current url?

Closed this issue · 1 comments

LukasWallrich commented

Thanks for this package - at the moment, it seems to be a great alternative to rSelenium that often causes me issue.

I am now trying to use chromote in a context where URLs are often redirected - yet was struggling to find a way to obtain the current URL. After various searches, I realised that I can run driver$Runtime$evaluate("window.location.href")$result$value ... so unless that breaks, my issue is resolved - but maybe still worth simplifying?

wch commented

I just asked ChatGPT how to do this, and here's what it said:

To get the URL of the current page using the Chrome DevTools Protocol (often referred to as CDP), you'll typically use the Page domain and the Page.getNavigationHistory method. This method returns the navigation history of the current page, from which you can extract the URL of the current page.

Here's a step-by-step guide:

  1. Connect to Chrome: Before you can send any commands to Chrome via CDP, you need to establish a connection. This usually involves launching Chrome with remote debugging enabled or connecting to an already running instance.

  2. Enable the Page domain: Before you can use methods from the Page domain, you need to enable it.

  3. Call the Page.getNavigationHistory method: This method will return the navigation history, including a list of entries. The current entry is the one with the index specified by currentIndex.

  4. Extract the URL: From the returned navigation history, you can get the URL of the current page.

I tried it with Chromote:

b <- ChromoteSession$new()
b$Page$navigate("http://github.com")
b$Page$navigate("http://r-project.org")

str(b$Page$getNavigationHistory())
#> List of 2
#>  $ currentIndex: int 2
#>  $ entries     :List of 3
#>   ..$ :List of 5
#>   .. ..$ id            : int 2
#>   .. ..$ url           : chr "about:blank"
#>   .. ..$ userTypedURL  : chr "about:blank"
#>   .. ..$ title         : chr ""
#>   .. ..$ transitionType: chr "typed"
#>   ..$ :List of 5
#>   .. ..$ id            : int 4
#>   .. ..$ url           : chr "https://github.com/"
#>   .. ..$ userTypedURL  : chr "http://github.com/"
#>   .. ..$ title         : chr "GitHub: Let’s build from here · GitHub"
#>   .. ..$ transitionType: chr "typed"
#>   ..$ :List of 5
#>   .. ..$ id            : int 6
#>   .. ..$ url           : chr "https://www.r-project.org/"
#>   .. ..$ userTypedURL  : chr "http://r-project.org/"
#>   .. ..$ title         : chr "R: The R Project for Statistical Computing"
#>   .. ..$ transitionType: chr "typed"

x <- b$Page$getNavigationHistory()
x$entries[[x$currentIndex + 1]]
#> $id
#> [1] 6
#> 
#> $url
#> [1] "https://www.r-project.org/"
#> 
#> $userTypedURL
#> [1] "http://r-project.org/"
#> 
#> $title
#> [1] "R: The R Project for Statistical Computing"
#> 
#> $transitionType
#> [1] "typed"
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