Mobile/GeckoView: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 13:58, 16 March 2018

What is GeckoView

GeckoView is an Android library project that allows third-party developers to use Gecko as an Android View in their own applications. GeckoView is similar to Android's built in WebView, but it is not a drop in replacement for WebView.

Note that GeckoView is NOT ready to be used in a production environment. It is currently possible to load webpages, but that's about it. See bug 1322573.

Using GeckoView

Download a recent GeckoView AAR from treeherder (mozilla-central tree). The AAR is available from the 'Android API16+ Gradle opt' job under the 'Bng' symbol. After clicking that, there is a link to 'geckoview-0.0.1.aar' in the bottom pane.
Add the GeckoView AAR to your Gradle / Android Studio project. In Android Studio you can add the .aar as follows:
1. Move the geckoview aar to your project's 'app/libs' folder.
2. Use the 'New Module' option under the 'File' menu.
3. Import the .aar file.
4. Add the new GeckoView AAR module as a dependency to the application.

You can now use GeckoView your app by including the following in a layout XML file:

<org.mozilla.gecko.GeckoView
  android:id="@+id/geckoview"
  android:layout_width="fill_parent"
  android:layout_height="wrap_content" />

You can then load a page in your code with:

// Find the GeckoView in our layout
GeckoView geckoView = (GeckoView) findViewById(R.id.geckoview);

// Attach the GeckoView to a new GeckoSession
GeckoSession session = new GeckoSession();
geckoView.setSession(session);

// Load a URL
session.loadUri("http://mozilla.com");

Example App

Firefox Focus has a build variant that uses Gecko. To build, check out the Focus code from https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/focus-android and follow the instructions. The only difference is you need to select one of the Gecko build variants from the Android Studio 'Build' menu.

The Gecko-related code for Focus lives in WebViewProvider.java