This blog post is about chromietabs [1] library, that provides information (URL) about currently open tabs in Google Chrome and Chromium web browsers.
TL;DR;
Motivation
I was always curious how do I spend time using my computer - what applications do I use, how much time do I spend using particular app etc. I know there is plenty of software that could track my activity on the market, however, none of them met my requirements, so couple of months ago I've started workertracker project [2], which does the job. I'll blog about the application in the future, since is not ready yet (there's a few pre-releases, so feel free to test it), however, the post is about quite important feature of the app - accessing current URL of the browser (in google-chrome, for now).
chromietabs library
Since I couldn't find any good solution on the internet, I've decided to implement a tiny library that will provide information about active tab in Google Chrome and Chromium web browsers.
An Interface of the chromietabs library is very simple, and it consists of few layers - depends on how detailed information you need, you should use another class. The example below demonstrates how can you access the URL of the current tab in google chrome:
A full example can be found in the git repository [1].
You can also use the documentation [3].
Please note, that current release (0.1) is a pre-release, and the API might change a bit.
How does it work?
I've noticed, that when I kill (not close) google-chrome, it's able to restore my tabs after the crash. It means, that it has to constantly update some file saving information about the tabs. I was right - there is a binary file in your profile directory - Current Session - that stores that information.
Unfortunately, Current Session is a binary file, so I had to go through the chromium source code to figure out the file format.
Feedback
Feedback is always appreciated! Feel free to comment, report issues[4], or create pull requests [5].
Links
[1] https://github.com/loganek/chromietabs
[2] https://github.com/loganek/workertracker
[3] https://loganek.github.io/chromietabs/master//index.html
[4] https://github.com/loganek/chromietabs/issues
[5] https://github.com/loganek/chromietabs/pulls
TL;DR;
Motivation
I was always curious how do I spend time using my computer - what applications do I use, how much time do I spend using particular app etc. I know there is plenty of software that could track my activity on the market, however, none of them met my requirements, so couple of months ago I've started workertracker project [2], which does the job. I'll blog about the application in the future, since is not ready yet (there's a few pre-releases, so feel free to test it), however, the post is about quite important feature of the app - accessing current URL of the browser (in google-chrome, for now).
chromietabs library
Since I couldn't find any good solution on the internet, I've decided to implement a tiny library that will provide information about active tab in Google Chrome and Chromium web browsers.
An Interface of the chromietabs library is very simple, and it consists of few layers - depends on how detailed information you need, you should use another class. The example below demonstrates how can you access the URL of the current tab in google chrome:
ChromieTabs::SessionAnalyzer analyzer{
ChromieTabs::SessionReader("Current Session")};
auto window_id = analyzer.get_current_window_id();
auto active_tab_id = analyzer.get_current_tab_id(window_id);
std::cout << analyzer.get_current_url(active_tab_id) << std::endl;
A full example can be found in the git repository [1].
You can also use the documentation [3].
Please note, that current release (0.1) is a pre-release, and the API might change a bit.
How does it work?
I've noticed, that when I kill (not close) google-chrome, it's able to restore my tabs after the crash. It means, that it has to constantly update some file saving information about the tabs. I was right - there is a binary file in your profile directory - Current Session - that stores that information.
Unfortunately, Current Session is a binary file, so I had to go through the chromium source code to figure out the file format.
Feedback
Feedback is always appreciated! Feel free to comment, report issues[4], or create pull requests [5].
Links
[1] https://github.com/loganek/chromietabs
[2] https://github.com/loganek/workertracker
[3] https://loganek.github.io/chromietabs/master//index.html
[4] https://github.com/loganek/chromietabs/issues
[5] https://github.com/loganek/chromietabs/pulls
No comments:
Post a Comment