Standalone Javascript Layout Engine?

Assuming I retrieved HTML content from a website (over which I have no control), and that content contains lots of Javascript code that's a significant part of what's actually rend

Solution 1:

I think the answer is yes, but don't do that.

If I had to implement a solution for translating 'Facebook' to a mobile phone, I could set up a server, maybe on Amazon EC2 and run the browser there, using a browser automation solution, such as Watir to simulate the clicks and scrape the data off the page. I think it's too much to hope for that you could run that efficiently behind the scenes on the phone itself.

However, the better solution might be to use Firebug/Fiddler etc to reverse engineer the ajax calls being sent and find a way to get the underlying data? Or maybe you just need to reverse-engineer the JS :(.

Solution 2:

It sounds like you want something like this :

http://jsconsole.com/

You basically load the url and mess with it. You just need to hook something into it to do it programmatically.

Take a look at their remote debugging explanation.

Since it's hooked upto to your android over a stream you can use any old PC technology you want to sniff the HTML.