You are a software developer at a local organization and you have been asked to create Python code for a web plugin that blocks ads in a web browser.
Tools needed: Python 3, web browser with support for extensions
Step 1: Open a text editor or Python IDE and create a new Python file.
Step 2: Import the necessary libraries at the top of the file:
- import re
- import webbrowser
Step 3: Define a function called “block_ads” that takes a URL and blocks any ads in the webpage at that URL.
Step 4: Inside the “block_ads” function, add the following code to block ads:
- # Open the webpage in a new tab
- webbrowser.open_new_tab(url)
- # Wait for the webpage to load
- time.sleep(5)
- # Read the HTML source code of the webpage
- html = webbrowser.get(‘firefox’)._browser.get_current_page()
- # Use regular expressions to find and remove any script tags containing “ads” or “ad”
- html = re.sub(r'<script(.*?)ads(.*?)</script>’, ”, html)
- html = re.sub(r'<script(.*?)ad(.*?)</script>’, ”, html)
- # Use regular expressions to find and remove any iframe tags containing “ads” or “ad”
- html = re.sub(r'<iframe(.*?)ads(.*?)</iframe>’, ”, html)
- html = re.sub(r'<iframe(.*?)ad(.*?)</iframe>’, ”, html)
- # Use regular expressions to find and remove any div tags containing “ads” or “ad”
- html = re.sub(r'<div(.*?)ads(.*?)</div>’, ”, html)
- html = re.sub(r'<div(.*?)ad(.*?)</div>’, ”, html)
- # Use regular expressions to find and remove any img tags containing “ads” or “ad”
- html = re.sub(r'<img(.*?)ads(.*?)/>’, ”, html)
- html = re.sub(r'<img(.*?)ad(.*?)/>’, ”, html)
Step 5: Inside the “block_ads” function, add the following code to update the webpage with the modified HTML:
- # Use the webbrowser library to update the webpage with the modified HTML
- webbrowser.get(‘firefox’)._browser.load_html(html)
Step 6: Test the “block_ads” function by calling it with a test URL.
Your code should open the specified URL in a web browser, wait for the webpage to load, remove any ads from the webpage, and update the webpage with the modified HTML.
Blog Reference:
- “How to Create a Chrome Extension in 5 Minutes Flat” (https://www.sitepoint.com/how-to-create-a-chrome-extension-in-5-minutes-flat/)
- “Creating a Simple Web Extension” (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/WebExtensions/Your_first_WebExtension)
- “Creating a Basic Extension” (https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/getstarted)
- “Creating a Browser Extension in Python” (https://realpython.com/browser-extension-python/)
