hello, Bryan!

how can I help you today?

Hey Mark, I hope you are having a great day

thanks -- you too!

I am trying to see if there is a way to "automate" something in a webview without accessibility

my ideal situation:

even better would be if I could do it on a headless webview

I have read a bunch of stuff out there around this type of interaction (some by you on stack overflow), and have not come away with a clear answer

so figured I would ask :)

um, well, that's difficult to answer in the abstract

there are also legal issues, which I won't get into

WebView itself has nothing specifically for this

do you know if accessibility has access to the specifics of a webview?

but you can invoke JavaScript in the context of the currently-viewed Web page

meaning will it report the ids of the html itself

I doubt it but do not know for certain

right, but invoking javascript only helps if you know specifics about the page, right?

well, sure

if you're thinking that you will be able to do this for an arbitrary Web page... that's impractical

yeah, I am working under the assumption that I don't know that, and that I would want to "discover" it via the initial interaction by the user

it would only be arbitrary as far as the app knows, the user will know it

if that makes sense

well, yes, but unless the user is writing the app, that doesn't help much

that was what I was afraid of :(

do you know if the the dom crawler and whatnot in chrome is available in the webview

all the dev tools on chrome desktop

etc

there is a way you can hook up Chrome DevTools to a WebView, IIRC

internally, or via adb?

adb, IIRC

internally meaning in app

the tools themselves are in Chrome

ok, thanks, not necessarily what I was hoping for, but good to know :)

I have another question if you have time

it's reminiscent of how Stetho leverages the DevTools protocol to allow you to inspect a non-WebView android app

gotcha

sure -- there's nobody else in the chat room at the moment

so I quickly, too quickly, moved my app to support SDK 26

and it wreaked havoc on a bunch of things

due to how much I was using background processes, etc

so I am going to have to do some serious rewriting

do you mean that you set targetSdkVersion to 26?

yeah

:(

live and learn

the nice thing is that my app has an expected persistent notification

but currently I have multiple services that were running in the background

it seems that I need to move the functionality of those into one service that is attached to the notification

so they can run in the background

is that correct?

probably

meaning the service running in the background has to be bound to the notification

I have not experimented with that scenario

it doesn't whitelist all services from an app if they have a notification

ok

mostly because having 2+ services running simultaneously is a code smell

it is possible that having a single foreground service is sufficient

but I haven't tried it

yeah, when I originally wrote it it seemed good to separate the functionality out

separate functionality, in terms of Java classes, is fine

separate functionality, in terms of independent services, is probably overkill

makes sense

ok, thanks for the time!

off the cuff, having a single foreground service ought to work

assuming that all of the services are in one process

as "foregroundness" is a process-level construct

yeah, I hope to merge them all down into that and move over to rxjava

("foregroundosity"? "foregrounditude"?)

I think they all work ;)

have a good rest of your day!

I am sure I will be back soon

you too!

hello, Dave!

how can I help you today?

Hey, Mark. I finally broke down and j'ined up. I did NOT expect a 4500-page book! Are you now doing office hours? I sort of stumbled onto this page. In the future, to get into an office hours lecture, seminar, colloquiem, whatever it's called, do I just go straight to https://commonsware.campfirenow.com/room/249110, or does the last part of the URL change, and if so, how do I get it? Do I sign up somewhere, email you, etc.

"I did NOT expect a 4500-page book!" -- well, technically, there are three books, with a fourth on the way

Colloquium

"Are you now doing office hours?" -- been doing 'em for the better part of a decade: https://commonsware.com/office-hours/

"does the last part of the URL change" - yes

"how do I get it?" -- visit https://wares.commonsware.com, log in, click the "Office Hours" nav bar link

if the chat is live, that link is in green, and there's an "Enter the Chat" button above the calendar of upcoming chats

Ah. Just go to the URL I mentioned and you'll have changed the last part to something else.

the Campfire chat room URL is different on each chat

at least, I think

I haven't really paid attention to that part

I've been focusing on the URL that goes into the Warescription site

BTW, I MEANT to ask "are you doing office hours right at the moment." I knew you had done so for awhile

yup, in the rotating schedule, I have office hours today from 4-5pm US Eastern

Well, my daughter's boyfriend, who is about 50, had a stroke, I just found out, so I have to leave abruptly. He went to a local hospital and they plan to send him to U. of Cincinnati. Thank God. Local is very lacking. Anyway, thanks for all the hard work you've done over a couple decades, I guess, or more. Including helping me so many times. Thanks especially for that. I'm sitting tight waiting for news about which hospital, but I'm still going to leave the room.

my condolences -- I wish everyone the best of luck

and thanks for the kind words!