The object webbrowser.get() returns has, and had for a long time, a useful but undocumented field name. I wonder if it would be OK to document it as something like a system-dependent name for the browser. This would go here:

https://docs.python.org/3/library/webbrowser.html#browser-controller-objects

The reason I'd like this is so that I can write code like the following:

# In Crostini Chrome OS Linux, the default browser is set to an
# intermediary called `garcon-url-handler`.
# It opens URLs in Chrome running outside the linux VM. This 
# browser does not have access to the Linux filesystem. Some references:
# https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/platform2/+/master/vm_tools/garcon/#opening-urls
# https://source.chromium.org/search?q=garcon-url-handler

if "garcon-url-handler" in webbrowser.get().name:
  webbrowser.open("http://external-url.com/docs.html")
else:
  webbrowser.open("file:///usr/share/doc/docs.html")

This would work correctly, even if the user has installed a browser native to the Linux VM and put it into their BROWSER environment variable. I don't know a better way to achieve the same effect.

Some references to where the name field was introduced:

https://bugs.python.org/issue754022

e8f2443

Zach, gaurawgoshwami is a spammer. Deleted added nosy, unlinked spam file and unrelated PR. I have no idea what 'repository containing patch' means or how g. created link to non-existent? file.

Hm, looks like .name does not exist for MacOSXOSAScript:

Python 3.11.0a3+ (heads/main-dirty:71ef0b4c2b, Dec 23 2021, 12:38:09) [Clang 11.0.0 (clang-1100.0.33.16)] on darwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import webbrowser
>>> webbrowser.get()
<webbrowser.MacOSXOSAScript object at 0x105a75500>
>>> a = webbrowser.get()
>>> dir(a)
['__class__', '__delattr__', '__dict__', '__dir__', '__doc__', '__eq__', '__format__', '__ge__', '__getattribute__', '__gt__', '__hash__', '__init__', '__init_subclass__', '__le__', '__lt__', '__module__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__reduce__', '__reduce_ex__', '__repr__', '__setattr__', '__sizeof__', '__str__', '__subclasshook__', '__weakref__', '_name', 'args', 'open', 'open_new', 'open_new_tab']
>>> a.name
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
AttributeError: 'MacOSXOSAScript' object has no attribute 'name'. Did you mean: '_name'?

This happens because MacOSXOSAScript does not call super().__init__() in any way, nor it defines name and basename attributes.

It has this API for 12 years now: 4d39f6e

So, I see two possible ways to solve this:

1. Ensure all subtypes of BaseBrowser to have name and basename (because they are defined in BaseBrowser) and document them
2. Add a code comment that they are just implementation details and not a part of the public API

New changeset d12bec6 by Nikita Sobolev in branch 'main':
bpo-43424: Deprecate webbrowser.MacOSXOSAScript._name attribute (GH-30241)
d12bec6

Thank you very much, Nikita! Your patch would certainly solve my issue.

As is, I checked the code I wrote, and it seems that only a lucky
ordering of if-statements caused it to work on Macs.

Ilya.

On Wed, Dec 29, 2021 at 5:30 PM Dong-hee Na report@bugs.python.org wrote:

Dong-hee Na donghee.na@python.org added the comment:

New changeset d12bec6 by Nikita Sobolev in branch 'main':
bpo-43424: Deprecate webbrowser.MacOSXOSAScript._name attribute (GH-30241)
d12bec6

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nosy: +corona10

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Python tracker <report@bugs.python.org>
<https://bugs.python.org/issue43424\>

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