wxWebView(3)

📦

version 29.0.6 · 3 versions

wxWebView(3) — Erlang Module Definition 💖

okay bestie, welcome to the wxWebView page — it's the wxWidgets web-render control, and this is the Erlang binding. It's giving browser-in-your-app energy fr.

NAME 🌸

wxWebView — This control may be used to render web (HTML / CSS / javascript) documents.

DESCRIPTION ✨

It is designed to allow the creation of multiple backends for each port, although currently just one is available. It differs from wxHtmlWindow in that each backend is actually a full rendering engine, Trident on MSW and Webkit on macOS and GTK. This allows the correct viewing of complex pages with javascript and css.

Backend Descriptions 🧚

Par:

The IE backend uses Microsoft's Trident rendering engine, specifically the version used by the locally installed copy of Internet Explorer. As such it is only available for the MSW port. By default recent versions of the WebBrowser control, which this backend uses, emulate Internet Explorer 7. This can be changed with a registry setting by wxWebView::MSWSetEmulationLevel() see this article for more information. This backend has full support for custom schemes and virtual file systems.

Par:

The Edge (Chromium) backend uses Microsoft's Edge WebView2. It is available for Windows 7 and newer. The following features are currently unsupported with this backend: virtual filesystems, custom urls, find.

This backend is not enabled by default, to build it follow these steps:

Visual Studio 2015, or newer, is required
Download the WebView2 SDK nuget package (Version 0.9.488 or newer)
Extract the package (it's a zip archive) to wxWidgets/3rdparty/webview2 (you should have 3rdparty/webview2/build/native/include/WebView2.h file after unpacking it)
Enable wxUSE_WEBVIEW_EDGE in CMake or setup.h
Build wxWidgets webview library
Copy WebView2Loader.dll from the subdirectory corresponding to the architecture used (x86 or x64) of wxWidgets/3rdparty/webview2/build/ to your applications executable
At runtime you can use isBackendAvailable/1 to check if the backend can be used (it will be available if WebView2Loader.dll can be loaded and Edge (Chromium) is installed)
Make sure to add a note about using the WebView2 SDK to your application documentation, as required by its licence

Par:

Under GTK the WebKit backend uses WebKitGTK+. The current minimum version required is 1.3.1 which ships by default with Ubuntu Natty and Debian Wheezy and has the package name libwebkitgtk-dev. Custom schemes and virtual files systems are supported under this backend, however embedded resources such as images and stylesheets are currently loaded using the data:// scheme.

Par:

Under GTK3 the WebKit2 version of WebKitGTK+ is used. In Ubuntu the required package name is libwebkit2gtk-4.0-dev and under Fedora it is webkitgtk4-devel. All wxWEBVIEW_WEBKIT features are supported except for clearing and enabling / disabling the history.

The macOS WebKit backend uses Apple's WebView class. This backend has full support for custom schemes and virtual file systems.

Asynchronous Notifications 🌙

Many of the methods in wxWebView are asynchronous, i.e. they return immediately and perform their work in the background. This includes functions such as loadURL/2 and reload/2. To receive notification of the progress and completion of these functions you need to handle the events that are provided. Specifically wxEVT_WEBVIEW_LOADED notifies when the page or a sub-frame has finished loading and wxEVT_WEBVIEW_ERROR notifies that an error has occurred.

Virtual File Systems and Custom Schemes 🗂️

wxWebView supports the registering of custom scheme handlers, for example file or http. To do this create a new class which inherits from wxWebViewHandler (not implemented in wx), where wxWebHandler::GetFile() returns a pointer to a wxFSFile (not implemented in wx) which represents the given url. You can then register your handler with RegisterHandler() (not implemented in wx) it will be called for all pages and resources.

wxWebViewFSHandler (not implemented in wx) is provided to access the virtual file system encapsulated by wxFileSystem (not implemented in wx). The wxMemoryFSHandler (not implemented in wx) documentation gives an example of how this may be used.

wxWebViewArchiveHandler (not implemented in wx) is provided to allow the navigation of pages inside a zip archive. It supports paths of the form: scheme:///C:/example/docs.zip;protocol=zip/main.htm

Events 🎟️

Event types emitted from this class:

webview_navigating
webview_navigated
webview_loaded
webview_error
webview_newwindow
webview_title_changed

This class is derived, and can use functions, from:

wxControl
wxWindow
wxEvtHandler

📚 wxWidgets docs: wxWebView

DATA TYPES 🎀

wxWebView() :: wx:wx_object().

FUNCTIONS 💅

`canCopy` 🫶

canCopy(This) -> boolean() when This :: wxWebView().

Returns true if the current selection can be copied.

Note: This always returns true on the macOS WebKit backend.

`canCut` ✂️

canCut(This) -> boolean() when This :: wxWebView().

Returns true if the current selection can be cut.

Note: This always returns true on the macOS WebKit backend.

`canGoBack` ⬅️

canGoBack(This) -> boolean() when This :: wxWebView().

Returns true if it is possible to navigate backward in the history of visited pages.

`canGoForward` ➡️

canGoForward(This) -> boolean() when This :: wxWebView().

Returns true if it is possible to navigate forward in the history of visited pages.

`canPaste` 📋

canPaste(This) -> boolean() when This :: wxWebView().

Returns true if data can be pasted.

Note: This always returns true on the macOS WebKit backend.

`canRedo` 🔁

canRedo(This) -> boolean() when This :: wxWebView().

Returns true if there is an action to redo.

`canSetZoomType` 🔍

canSetZoomType(This, Type) -> boolean()
                               when This :: wxWebView(), Type :: wx:wx_enum().

Retrieve whether the current HTML engine supports a zoom type.

Return: Whether this type of zoom is supported by this HTML engine (and thus can be set through setZoomType/2).

`canUndo` ↩️

canUndo(This) -> boolean() when This :: wxWebView().

Returns true if there is an action to undo.

`clearHistory` 🧹

clearHistory(This) -> ok when This :: wxWebView().

Clear the history, this will also remove the visible page.

Note: This is not implemented on the WebKit2GTK+ backend.

`clearSelection` 🧼

clearSelection(This) -> ok when This :: wxWebView().

Clears the current selection.

`copy` 📄

copy(This) -> ok when This :: wxWebView().

Copies the current selection.

`cut` ✂️

cut(This) -> ok when This :: wxWebView().

Cuts the current selection.

`deleteSelection` 🗑️

deleteSelection(This) -> ok when This :: wxWebView().

Deletes the current selection.

Note that for wxWEBVIEW_BACKEND_WEBKIT the selection must be editable, either through SetEditable or the correct HTML attribute.

`enableContextMenu` 🖱️

enableContextMenu(This, [Option]) -> ok
                                  when
                                      This :: wxWebView(),
                                      Option :: {enable, boolean()}.

Enable or disable the right click context menu.

By default the standard context menu is enabled, this method can be used to disable it or re-enable it later.

Since: 2.9.5

`enableHistory` 🕰️

enableHistory(This, [Option]) -> ok
                              when
                                  This :: wxWebView(),
                                  Option :: {enable, boolean()}.

Enable or disable the history.

This will also clear the history.

Note: This is not implemented on the WebKit2GTK+ backend.

`find` 🔎

find(This, Text, [Option]) -> integer()
                     when
                         This :: wxWebView(),
                         Text :: unicode:chardata(),
                         Option :: {flags, wx:wx_enum()}.

Finds a phrase on the current page and if found, the control will scroll the phrase into view and select it.

Return: If search phrase was not found in combination with the flags then wxNOT_FOUND is returned. If called for the first time with search phrase then the total number of results will be returned. Then for every time its called with the same search phrase it will return the number of the current match.

Note: This function will restart the search if the flags wxWEBVIEW_FIND_ENTIRE_WORD or wxWEBVIEW_FIND_MATCH_CASE are changed, since this will require a new search. To reset the search, for example resetting the highlights call the function with an empty search phrase. This always returns wxNOT_FOUND on the macOS WebKit backend.

Since: 2.9.5

`getCurrentTitle` 🏷️

getCurrentTitle(This) -> unicode:charlist()
                                when This :: wxWebView().

Get the title of the current web page, or its URL/path if title is not available.

`getCurrentURL` 🔗

getCurrentURL(This) -> unicode:charlist() when This :: wxWebView().

Get the URL of the currently displayed document.

`getPageSource` 📜

getPageSource(This) -> unicode:charlist() when This :: wxWebView().

Get the HTML source code of the currently displayed document.

Return: The HTML source code, or an empty string if no page is currently shown.

`getPageText` 📝

getPageText(This) -> unicode:charlist() when This :: wxWebView().

Get the text of the current page.

`getSelectedSource` 🎯

getSelectedSource(This) -> unicode:charlist()
                                  when This :: wxWebView().

Returns the currently selected source, if any.

`getSelectedText` 🎀

getSelectedText(This) -> unicode:charlist()
                                when This :: wxWebView().

Returns the currently selected text, if any.

`getZoom` 🔍

getZoom(This) -> wx:wx_enum() when This :: wxWebView().

Get the zoom level of the page.

See getZoomFactor/1 to get more precise zoom scale value other than as provided by wxWebViewZoom.

Return: The current level of zoom.

`getZoomFactor` 🔬

getZoomFactor(This) -> number() when This :: wxWebView().

Get the zoom factor of the page.

Return: The current factor of zoom.

Since: 3.1.4

`getZoomType` 🧿

getZoomType(This) -> wx:wx_enum() when This :: wxWebView().

Get how the zoom factor is currently interpreted.

Return: How the zoom factor is currently interpreted by the HTML engine.

`goBack` ⏪

goBack(This) -> ok when This :: wxWebView().

Navigate back in the history of visited pages.

Only valid if canGoBack/1 returns true.

`goForward` ⏩

goForward(This) -> ok when This :: wxWebView().

Navigate forward in the history of visited pages.

Only valid if canGoForward/1 returns true.

`hasSelection` ✅

hasSelection(This) -> boolean() when This :: wxWebView().

Returns true if there is a current selection.

`isBackendAvailable/1` 🦋

isBackendAvailable(Backend) -> boolean()
    when Backend :: unicode:chardata().

Okay bestie, this one is your backend vibe check: it lets you check if a specific backend is currently available. Slay.

Since: 3.1.4

`isBusy/1` 💅

isBusy(This) -> boolean() when This :: wxWebView().

Returns whether the web control is currently busy — like, is it loading a page or what? 🫶

`isContextMenuEnabled/1` 🎀

isContextMenuEnabled(This) -> boolean() when This :: wxWebView().

Returns true if a context menu will show up on right click. Iconic.

Since: 2.9.5

`isEditable/1` ✨

isEditable(This) -> boolean() when This :: wxWebView().

Returns whether the web control is currently editable. It's giving "can I type in this or not?"

`loadURL/2` 🌈

loadURL(This, Url) -> ok
    when This :: wxWebView(), Url :: unicode:chardata().

Load a web page from a URL. Easy.

Note: Web engines generally report errors asynchronously, so if you wish to know whether loading the URL was successful, register to receive navigation error events. No cap.

`new/3` 👑

new(Parent, Id, [Option]) -> wxWebView()
    when
        Parent :: wxWindow:wxWindow(),
        Id :: integer(),
        Option ::
            {url, unicode:chardata()} |
            {pos, {X :: integer(), Y :: integer()}} |
            {size, {W :: integer(), H :: integer()}} |
            {backend, unicode:chardata()} |
            {style, integer()}.

Factory function to create a new wxWebView using a wxWebViewFactory — but not implemented in wx, bestie. 💀

Return: The created wxWebView, or NULL if the requested backend is not available.

Since: 2.9.5

`paste/1` 💖

paste(This) -> ok when This :: wxWebView().

Pastes the current data. Just like Ctrl+V, but make it API.

`print/1` 🖨️

print(This) -> ok when This :: wxWebView().

Opens a print dialog so the user can print the currently displayed page. Old school, but iconic.

`redo/1` 🔥

redo(This) -> ok when This :: wxWebView().

Redos the last action. The redo to your undo, periodt.

`reload/2` 🧚

reload(This, [Option]) -> ok
    when
        This :: wxWebView(), Option :: {flags,
wx:wx_enum()}.

Reload the currently displayed URL. Refresh, but fancy.

Note: The flags are ignored by the edge backend. So don't stress about them there.

`runScript/2` 🪄

runScript(This, Javascript) -> Result
    when
        Result ::
            {Res :: boolean(),
             Output :: unicode:charlist()},
        This :: wxWebView(),
        Javascript :: unicode:chardata().

Runs the given JavaScript code. JavaScript code is executed inside the browser control and has full access to DOM and other browser-provided functionality. For example, this code will replace the current page contents with the provided string.

If output is non-null, it is filled with the result of executing this code on success, e.g. a JavaScript value such as a string, a number (integer or floating point), a boolean or JSON representation for non-primitive types such as arrays and objects. For example:

This function has a few platform-specific limitations:

When using WebKit v1 in wxGTK2, retrieving the result of JavaScript execution is unsupported and this function will always return false if output is non-null to indicate this. This functionality is fully supported when using WebKit v2 or later in wxGTK3.
When using WebKit under macOS, code execution is limited to at most 10MiB of memory and 10 seconds of execution time.
When using IE backend under MSW, scripts can only be executed when the current page is fully loaded (i.e. wxEVT_WEBVIEW_LOADED event was received). A script tag inside the page HTML is required in order to run JavaScript.

Also notice that under MSW converting JavaScript objects to JSON is not supported in the default emulation mode. wxWebView implements its own object-to-JSON conversion as a fallback for this case, however it is not as full-featured, well-tested or performing as the implementation of this functionality in the browser control itself, so it is recommended to use MSWSetEmulationLevel() to change emulation level to a more modern one in which JSON conversion is done by the control itself.

Return: true if there is a result, false if there is an error.

`selectAll/1` 🌸

selectAll(This) -> ok when This :: wxWebView().

Selects the entire page. Ctrl+A energy.

`setEditable/2` 💜

setEditable(This, [Option]) -> ok
    when
        This :: wxWebView(),
        Option :: {enable, boolean()}.

Set the editable property of the web control. Enabling allows the user to edit the page even if the contenteditable attribute is not set. The exact capabilities vary with the backend being used. So it's giving "depends on the vibes of your backend."

`setPage/3` 🍓

setPage(This, Html, BaseUrl) -> ok
    when
        This :: wxWebView(),
        Html :: unicode:chardata(),
        BaseUrl :: unicode:chardata().

Set the displayed page source to the contents of the given string.

Note: When using wxWEBVIEW_BACKEND_IE you must wait for the current page to finish loading before calling setPage/3. The baseURL parameter is not used in this backend and the edge backend. So heads up, bestie.

`setZoom/2` 🔍

setZoom(This, Zoom) -> ok
    when This :: wxWebView(), Zoom :: wx:wx_enum().

Set the zoom level of the page.

See setZoomFactor/2 for more precise scaling other than the measured steps provided by wxWebViewZoom.

`setZoomFactor/2` 🌟

setZoomFactor(This, Zoom) -> ok
    when This :: wxWebView(), Zoom :: number().

Set the zoom factor of the page.

Note: zoom scale in IE will be converted into wxWebViewZoom levels for wxWebViewZoomType of wxWEBVIEW_ZOOM_TYPE_TEXT.

Since: 3.1.4

`setZoomType/2` 🎯

setZoomType(This, ZoomType) -> ok
    when This :: wxWebView(), ZoomType :: wx:wx_enum().

Set how to interpret the zoom factor.

Note: invoke canSetZoomType/2 first, some HTML renderers may not support all zoom types. So call ahead, okay?

`stop/1` 🛑

stop(This) -> ok when This :: wxWebView().

Stop the current page loading process, if any. May trigger an error event of type wxWEBVIEW_NAV_ERR_USER_CANCELLED. TODO: make wxWEBVIEW_NAV_ERR_USER_CANCELLED errors uniform across ports.

`undo/1` ↩️

undo(This) -> ok when This :: wxWebView().

Undos the last action. (Yes, it's "Undos" in the source, bestie. We don't make the rules, we just slay them.)

This page was brought to you by Ericsson AB, running on version wx 2.6, and it's the wxWebView(3) manual page. Mwah! 💋

📦 where this page comes from

ubuntu stonking: erlang-doc 1:29.0.6+dfsg-1 · Apache-2.0
💖 girlified by deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash on 2026-11-03: a language model's rewrite of the original, under its terms

wxWebView(3)

wxWebView(3) — Erlang Module Definition 💖

NAME 🌸

DESCRIPTION ✨

Backend Descriptions 🧚

Asynchronous Notifications 🌙

Virtual File Systems and Custom Schemes 🗂️

Events 🎟️

DATA TYPES 🎀

FUNCTIONS 💅

canCopy 🫶

canCut ✂️

canGoBack ⬅️

canGoForward ➡️

canPaste 📋

canRedo 🔁

canSetZoomType 🔍

canUndo ↩️

clearHistory 🧹

clearSelection 🧼

copy 📄

cut ✂️

deleteSelection 🗑️

enableContextMenu 🖱️

enableHistory 🕰️

find 🔎

getCurrentTitle 🏷️

getCurrentURL 🔗

getPageSource 📜

getPageText 📝

getSelectedSource 🎯

getSelectedText 🎀

getZoom 🔍

getZoomFactor 🔬

getZoomType 🧿

goBack ⏪

goForward ⏩

hasSelection ✅

isBackendAvailable/1 🦋

isBusy/1 💅

isContextMenuEnabled/1 🎀

isEditable/1 ✨

loadURL/2 🌈

new/3 👑

paste/1 💖

print/1 🖨️

redo/1 🔥

reload/2 🧚

runScript/2 🪄

selectAll/1 🌸

setEditable/2 💜

setPage/3 🍓

setZoom/2 🔍

setZoomFactor/2 🌟

setZoomType/2 🎯

stop/1 🛑

undo/1 ↩️

`canCopy` 🫶

`canCut` ✂️

`canGoBack` ⬅️

`canGoForward` ➡️

`canPaste` 📋

`canRedo` 🔁

`canSetZoomType` 🔍

`canUndo` ↩️

`clearHistory` 🧹

`clearSelection` 🧼

`copy` 📄

`cut` ✂️

`deleteSelection` 🗑️

`enableContextMenu` 🖱️

`enableHistory` 🕰️

`find` 🔎

`getCurrentTitle` 🏷️

`getCurrentURL` 🔗

`getPageSource` 📜

`getPageText` 📝

`getSelectedSource` 🎯

`getSelectedText` 🎀

`getZoom` 🔍

`getZoomFactor` 🔬

`getZoomType` 🧿

`goBack` ⏪

`goForward` ⏩

`hasSelection` ✅

`isBackendAvailable/1` 🦋

`isBusy/1` 💅

`isContextMenuEnabled/1` 🎀

`isEditable/1` ✨

`loadURL/2` 🌈

`new/3` 👑

`paste/1` 💖

`print/1` 🖨️

`redo/1` 🔥

`reload/2` 🧚

`runScript/2` 🪄

`selectAll/1` 🌸

`setEditable/2` 💜

`setPage/3` 🍓

`setZoom/2` 🔍

`setZoomFactor/2` 🌟

`setZoomType/2` 🎯

`stop/1` 🛑

`undo/1` ↩️