I'm having some trouble figuring out how to get the content of some HTML after javascript has updated it.
Specifically, I'm trying to get the current time from US Naval Observatory Master Clock. It has an h1
element with the ID
of USNOclk
in which it displays the current time.
When the page first loads, this element is set to display "Loading...", and then javascript kicks in and updates it to the current time via
function showTime()
{
document.getElementById('USNOclk').innerHTML="Loading...<br />";
xmlHttp=GetXmlHttpObject();
if (xmlHttp==null){
document.getElementById('USNOclk').innerHTML="Sorry, browser incapatible. <BR />";
return;
}
refresher = 0;
startResponse = new Date().getTime();
var url="http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/cgi-bin/time.pl?n="+ startResponse;
xmlHttp.onreadystatechange=stateChanged;
xmlHttp.open("GET",url,true);
xmlHttp.send(null);
}
So, the problem is that I'm not sure how to get the updated time. When I check the element, I see the "Loading..." as the content of the h1
element.
I've double checked that javascript is enabled, and I've tried calling the waitForBackgroundJavaScript
function on the webclient
as well hoping that it would give the javascript time to start updating stuff. However, no success as of yet.
import com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit._
import com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.html.HtmlPage
object AtomicTime {
def main(args: Array[String]): Unit = {
val url = "http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/what.html"
val client = new WebClient(BrowserVersion.CHROME)
println(client.isJavaScriptEnabled()) // returns true
client.waitForBackgroundJavaScript(10000)
// client.waitForBackgroundJavaScriptStartingBefore(10000) //tried this one too without success
var response: HtmlPage = client.getPage(url)
println(response.asText())
}
}
How do I trigger the javascript to update the HTML?
I figured it out!
HtmlPage
objects have an executeJavaScript(String)
which can be used to kick off the showTime
script. Then, once the script has actually started, that's when waitForBackgroundJavaScript
becomes relevant.
The code I ended up with:
import com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit._
import com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.html.HtmlPage
import com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.html.DomElement
object AtomicTime {
def main(args: Array[String]): Unit = {
val url = "http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/what.html"
val client = new WebClient(BrowserVersion.CHROME)
var response: HtmlPage = client.getPage(url)
response.executeJavaScript("showTime")
printf("Current AtomicTime: %s", getUpdatedRespose(response, client))
}
def getUpdatedRespose(page: HtmlPage, client: WebClient): String = {
while (page.getElementById("USNOclk").asText() == "Loading...") {
client.waitForBackgroundJavaScript(200)
}
return page.getElementById("USNOclk").asText()
}
}
Although the waitForBackgroundJavaScript
method seems to be a good alternative it's worth mentioning that it is experimental. You can see that in the JavaDocs that state:
Experimental API: May be changed in next release and may not yet work perfectly!
So I recommend to go for a slightly more complex approach:
int amountOfTries = 10;
while (amountOfTries > 0 && CONDITION) {
amountOfTries--;
synchronized (page) {
page.wait(1000);
}
}
Note the amountOfTries
condition is there to take appropriate action if there has been some kind of issue with the request. Otherwise, you will end up getting your self into an infinite loop. Be careful with that.
Then you should replace CONDITION
with your actual condition. In this case it is
page.getElementById("USNOclk").asText().equals("Loading...")
In short, what the code above does is checking for the condition to become true
each second for a maximum of 10
seconds.
Of course, a better approach would be to extract this error checking behavior into a separate method so that you can reuse the logic on different conditions.
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