If you’re developing a Python application and need to integrate web browsing capabilities into it, PyQt provides two options: QWebView and QWebEngineView.

QWebView

QWebView is a widget that allows you to display web content in your PyQt application. It is based on the WebKit rendering engine and provides a simple way to embed web pages or HTML content.

Installation

To use QWebView, you need to install the PyQt5 library. You can do this by running the following command:

pip install PyQt5

Example usage

Here’s a simple example of how to use QWebView to display a web page in PyQt:

from PyQt5.QtWidgets import QApplication, QMainWindow, QVBoxLayout, QWidget
from PyQt5.QtWebKitWidgets import QWebView

app = QApplication([])
window = QMainWindow()
layout = QVBoxLayout()

webview = QWebView()
webview.load('https://www.example.com')
layout.addWidget(webview)

widget = QWidget()
widget.setLayout(layout)
window.setCentralWidget(widget)

window.show()
app.exec_()

In this example, we create a QWebView object, load a web page using the load() method, and then add the web view widget to a layout. We set this layout as the central widget of a main window and display it using show().

QWebEngineView

Starting from Qt 5.5, a new web engine called QWebEngineView was introduced as a replacement for QWebView. It is based on the Chromium web engine and provides improved performance, security, and support for modern web technologies.

Installation

To use QWebEngineView, you need to install the PyQtWebEngine library. You can do this by running the following command:

pip install PyQtWebEngine

Example usage

Here’s an example of how to use QWebEngineView to display a web page in PyQt:

from PyQt5.QtWidgets import QApplication, QMainWindow, QVBoxLayout, QWidget
from PyQt5.QtWebEngineWidgets import QWebEngineView

app = QApplication([])
window = QMainWindow()
layout = QVBoxLayout()

webview = QWebEngineView()
webview.setUrl('https://www.example.com')
layout.addWidget(webview)

widget = QWidget()
widget.setLayout(layout)
window.setCentralWidget(widget)

window.show()
app.exec_()

This example is similar to the previous one, but we use QWebEngineView instead of QWebView. The setUrl() method is used to load a web page.

Conclusion

Both QWebView and QWebEngineView provide powerful web browsing capabilities for your PyQt application. QWebView is a lightweight option based on the WebKit engine, while QWebEngineView is a more advanced solution based on the Chromium engine. Choose the one that best suits your needs based on performance, supported features, and compatibility with your application.