Oct. 02, 2012

Using the web browser in Python

The webbrowser module in Python provides an interface to display Web-based documents.

Webbrowser

Under most circumstances, simply calling the open() function from this module
will do the right thing. 

IN Unix, graphical browsers are preferred under X11, but text-mode browsers
will be used if graphical browsers are not available or an X11 display 
isn’t available. 

If text-mode browsers are used, the calling process will block until the user
exits the browser.

Usage Examples

webbrowser.open_new(url)
    Open url in a new window of the default browser, if possible, otherwise,
    open url in the only browser window.

webbrowser.open_new_tab(url)
    Open url in a new page (“tab”) of the default browser, if possible, 
    otherwise equivalent to open_new().

Webbrowser Script

This example will ask the user to enter a search term. 

A new browser tab will open with the search term in googles search field.


import webbrowser
google = raw_input('Google search:')
webbrowser.open_new_tab('http://www.google.com/search?btnG=1&q=%s' % google)

The script webbrowser can be used as a command-line interface for the module. 

It accepts an URL as the argument. 

It accepts the following optional parameters: 
	-n opens the URL in a new browser window, 
	-t opens the URL in a new browser page (“tab”)

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