[webkit-gtk] Send HTTP header line for every request

[Jay Strict]

On 27.06.2016 14:17, Adrián Pérez de Castro wrote:
> Quoting Carlos Garcia Campos (2016-06-27 08:21:13)
>> Of course, we just need to fully understand the problem and decide how
>> to make it possible. The easiest solution might be to add support for
>> loading JS web extensions. Adri started to work on python web
>> extensions, I don't know if JS support would be very different. See:
>>
>> https://lists.webkit.org/pipermail/webkit-gtk/2015-August/002416.html
>>
>> This would be the ideal solution in my opinion. But we could also add
>> API to the UI process to provide a set of headers to be added to any
>> request, for example, and use that from the web process. This would
>> probably be easier, but we can't add UI process API for every single
>> web extension feature required by JS apps, so adding a way to load JS
>> extensions would be much better.

I was thinking of changing the semantics of the signal
'resource-load-started', since there is so much confusion about it.
(Many people expect to be able to connect to this and change the
underlying request. I did expect this, Michael Catanzaro did expect this
and the stackoverflow answer I linked to did also expect this.)

Of course, you then would have to find a distinct name, like
'resource-load-start' or 'resource-load-initialize' and maybe deprecate
the old signal ... I don't really know.
Such a signal used to exist in WebKitGTK1 [1].

But I could also understand if you say that this breaks too much API.


> I do agree with Carlos here, and WebKitGTK+ should provide a way of loading
> JavaScript web extensions. As for Python, I have a working proof of concept
> C WebExtension which is a shim that itself loads the Python extension. You
> can check it here:
> 
>   https://github.com/aperezdc/webkit2gtk-python-webextension-example
> 
> (I am aware of a couple of people using the code in there as a basis for
> their Python applications which need a web extension, though in the longer
> term we will have something similar shipped with WebKitGTK+.)
> 
> Having a similar proof-of-concept for JavaScript extensions would be great.
> Ideally, it would be great to use JavaScriptCore for that, because it is
> part of WebKitGTK+. As tempting as it might be to use GJS, it looks like
> sticking to JSC (via Seed, see https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/Seed) would
> be better to have less dependencies in the case where one wants to use
> WebKitGTK+ *without* having GNOME Shell installed.

Being able to use WebExtensions from all interpreted languages seems
nice. Although, I must admit that it is hard for me to fully understand
all that you have said.
Would this enable me to use WebExtensions in Gnome shell extensions?

Furthermore, I have the feeling that for this to fully take off in the
sense that I can use it in standard Gnome shell extensions is a matter
of several years. :/



Kind regards,
Jay

[1]
http://webkitgtk.org/reference/webkitgtk/unstable/webkitgtk-webkitwebview.html#WebKitWebView-resource-request-starting