How to make the c ++ application work with the browser [closed] - c++

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How to make the c ++ application work with the browser. I mean a program that retrieves data from a given page (let's assume that the page displays a string) and then performs some reaction on the page. For example, the page displays a random string, and the program enters the length of the string into the form.
I am a novice programmer, so I care about information and advice on where to start. Thanks in advance for any help.

Answer 1

As I already promised to OP in comments, posting Partial answer, which doesn't answer all questions, but only provides handy tool to wrap (call) any Python code inside C++ program.
In my code snippet I don't even do anything with browsers, but instead show only example of computing Greatest Common Divisor using Python's standard function math.gcd().
I decided to introduce this Python-in-C++ bridge only because there exist many beautiful Python modules that work with browsers or with parsing/composing HTML, hence it is much easier to write such tools in Python instead of C++.
But expert without knowledge of default Python C API, it is not that easy to implement even simple use case - compile text of Python code, pass to it any arguments from C++, receive response arguments, return arguments back to C++. Only these simple actions need usage of a dozen of different Python C API functions. That's why I decided to show how to do it, as I know.
I implemented from scratch (specifically for OP's question) handy class PyRunner which does all the magic, usage of this class is simple:
PyRunner pyrun;
std::string code = R"(
def gcd(a, b):
import math
return math.gcd(a, b)
res = gcd(*arg)
print('GCD of', arg[0], 'and', arg[1], 'is', res, flush = True)
)";
std::cout << pyrun.Run(code, "(2 * 3 * 5, 2 * 3 * 7)") << std::endl;
std::cout << pyrun.Run(code, "(5 * 7 * 11, 5 * 7 * 13)") << std::endl;
Basically you just pass any Python code snippet to PyRunner::Run() method and also any argument (represented as Python object converted to string). Result of this call is also a returned Python object converted to string. You can also use JSON to pass any large argument as string and parse returned argument, as any JSON string is also a valid stringized Python object.
Of course you need a knowledge of Python to be able to write complex code snippets inside C++.
One drawback of my PyRunner class is that for some reason (that I didn't yet understand), you can't import Python module inside global scope, as you can see I did import math within function scope. But this is not a big deal, I think, and maybe some experts will clarify the reason.
To compile and run code you need to have pre-installed Python, and pass Python's include folder and library file as compiler arguments. For example in Windows CLang you do following:
clang.exe -std=c++20 -O3 -Id:/bin/Python39/include/ d:/bin/Python39/libs/python39.lib prog.cpp
and in Linux:
clang -std=c++20 -O3 -I/usr/include/ -lpython3.9 prog.cpp
To run the program either you should provide environment variables PYTHONHOME or PYTHONPATH or run program from Python folder (like d:/bin/Python39/) or do sys.path.append("d:/bin/Python39/") on first lines of Python code snippet embedded in C++. Without these paths Python can't find location of its standard library.
PyRunner class is thread-safe, but only single-threaded always. It means that two calls to .Run() inside two threads will be exclusively blocked by mutex. I use std::mutex instead of Python's GIL to protect from multi-threading, because it is quite alright (and faster), if you don't use Python C API in any other threads simultaneously. Also it is not allowed right now to have two instances of PyRunner objects as it does Py_Initialize() and Py_FinalizeEx() in constructor and destructor, which should be done globally only once. Hence PyRunner should be a singleton.
Below is full C++ code with implementation of PyRunner class and its usage (usage is inside main()). See console output after code below. Click Try it online! link to see compile/run of this code on free GodBolt online Linux servers.
Try it online!
#include <iostream>
#include <functional>
#include <string>
#include <string_view>
#include <stdexcept>
#include <memory>
#include <mutex>
#include <Python.h>
#define ASSERT_MSG(cond, msg) { if (!(cond)) throw std::runtime_error("Assertion (" #cond ") failed at line " + std::to_string(__LINE__) + "! Msg: '" + std::string(msg) + "'."); }
#define ASSERT(cond) ASSERT_MSG(cond, "")
#define PY_ASSERT_MSG(cond, msg) { if (!(cond) || PyErr_Occurred()) { PyErr_Print(); ASSERT_MSG(false && #cond, msg); } }
#define PY_ASSERT(cond) PY_ASSERT_MSG(cond, "")
#define LN { std::cout << "LN " << __LINE__ << std::endl << std::flush; }
class PyRunner {
private:
class PyObj {
public:
PyObj(PyObject * pobj, bool inc_ref = false) : p_(pobj) {
if (inc_ref)
Py_XINCREF(p_);
PY_ASSERT_MSG(p_, "NULL PyObject* passed!");
}
PyObject * Get() { return p_; }
~PyObj() {
Py_XDECREF(p_);
p_ = nullptr;
}
private:
PyObject * p_ = nullptr;
};
public:
PyRunner() {
Py_SetProgramName(L"prog.py");
Py_Initialize();
}
~PyRunner() {
codes_.clear();
Py_FinalizeEx();
}
std::string Run(std::string code, std::string const & arg = "None") {
std::unique_lock<std::mutex> lock(mutex_);
code = StrUnIndent(code);
if (!codes_.count(code))
codes_.insert(std::pair{code, std::make_shared<PyObj>(Py_CompileString(code.c_str(), "script.py", Py_file_input))});
PyObj & compiled = *codes_.at(code);
PyObj globals_arg_mod = PyModule_New("arg"), globals_arg = PyModule_GetDict(globals_arg_mod.Get()), locals_arg = PyDict_New(),
globals_mod = PyModule_New("__main__"), globals = PyModule_GetDict(globals_mod.Get()), locals = PyDict_New();
// py_arg = PyUnicode_FromString(arg.c_str()),
PyObj py_arg = PyRun_String(arg.c_str(), Py_eval_input, globals_arg.Get(), locals_arg.Get());
PY_ASSERT(PyDict_SetItemString(locals.Get(), "arg", py_arg.Get()) == 0);
#if 0
PyObj result = PyEval_EvalCode(compiled.Get(), globals.Get(), locals.Get());
#else
PyObj builtins(PyEval_GetBuiltins(), true), exec(PyDict_GetItemString(builtins.Get(), "exec"), true);
PyObj exec_args = PyTuple_Pack(3, compiled.Get(), globals.Get(), locals.Get());
PyObj result = PyObject_CallObject(exec.Get(), exec_args.Get());
#endif
PyObj res(PyDict_GetItemString(locals.Get(), "res"), true), res_str = PyObject_Str(res.Get());
char const * cres = nullptr;
PY_ASSERT(cres = PyUnicode_AsUTF8(res_str.Get()));
return cres;
}
private:
static std::string StrUnIndent(std::string_view const & s) {
auto lines = StrSplit(s, "\n");
size_t min_off = size_t(-1);
for (auto const & line: lines) {
if (StrTrim(line).empty())
continue;
min_off = std::min<size_t>(min_off, line.find_first_not_of("\t\n\v\f\r "));
}
ASSERT(min_off < 10000ULL);
std::string res;
for (auto const & line: lines)
res += line.substr(std::min<size_t>(min_off, line.size())) + "\n";
return res;
}
static std::string StrTrim(std::string s) {
s.erase(0, s.find_first_not_of("\t\n\v\f\r ")); // left trim
s.erase(s.find_last_not_of("\t\n\v\f\r ") + 1); // right trim
return s;
}
static std::vector<std::string> StrSplit(std::string_view const & s, std::string_view const & delim) {
std::vector<std::string> res;
size_t start = 0;
while (true) {
size_t pos = s.find(delim, start);
if (pos == std::string::npos)
pos = s.size();
res.emplace_back(s.substr(start, pos - start));
if (pos >= s.size())
break;
start = pos + delim.size();
}
return res;
}
private:
std::unordered_map<std::string, std::shared_ptr<PyObj>> codes_;
std::mutex mutex_;
};
int main() {
try {
PyRunner pyrun;
std::string code = R"(
def gcd(a, b):
import math
return math.gcd(a, b)
res = gcd(*arg)
print('GCD of', arg[0], 'and', arg[1], 'is', res, flush = True)
)";
std::cout << pyrun.Run(code, "(2 * 3 * 5, 2 * 3 * 7)") << std::endl;
std::cout << pyrun.Run(code, "(5 * 7 * 11, 5 * 7 * 13)") << std::endl;
return 0;
} catch (std::exception const & ex) {
std::cout << "Exception: " << ex.what() << std::endl;
return -1;
}
}
Console output:
GCD of 30 and 42 is 6
6
GCD of 385 and 455 is 35
35