How to build web application that run in WeChat in app browsers?

Question

I am trying to build a simple web application, which capture users photo and sent it my custom server there by connected to some other business use-case. My web page uses HTML's file input control to launch native camera or gallery pick up option.

var input = document.createElement('input');
    input.setAttribute('accept', 'image/*');
    input.setAttribute('capture', 'camera');
    input.setAttribute('type', 'file');
    input.click();

This web app, I placed in local webserver with a name "PhotoLocker" and testing with url like

https://localhost(ipaddress to access via mobile browser)/PhotoLocker/index.html

This link is working fine both on desktop and mobile chrome browsers and am able to debug any issues. Where as same link, I try to access from WeChat browser (just opening above link from chat window), it is not at all opening my application in WeChat in app browser.

After googling, I found that https URL scheme is not supported by WeChat. is it True? When I paste the same app url as weixin://ipaddress/PhotoLocker/index.html, I am able to see my web app home page but it is not working as expected.

My Question is - how to debug my webpage opened in WeChat browser? Do I need a official WeChat Dev account even to develop and test sample apps? Additional Info : I am able to debug webpage from WeChat web devloper tool as mentioned in below link. But, unable to debug mobile wechat page in this tool. It is always opening chrome dev tools. https://mp.weixin.qq.com/wiki?action=doc&id=mp1455784140&t=0.06697335132505233#1

Answer 1

All the information got regarding how to debug webpage opened in wechat browser redirects to how to see log or ajax/netwrok calls analysis. Even with WeChat web devloper tool as mentioned in below link, I am unable to debug mobile wechat page in this tool. It is always opening chrome dev tools.

https://mp.weixin.qq.com/wiki?action=doc&id=mp1455784140&t=0.06697335132505233#1.

Hence further analyzed remote mobile webpage debugging and found that there is no way to put break points, watch, expressions and all just like in chrome dev tools is not possible.

As a work around - you are able to debug code, when you simulate page in dev tools but no way to debug webpage in mobile device.

Same webpage when tried to do remote debugging as per WeChat web devloper tool documentation. here we can only see console logs and network calls.

Answer 2

I am a frontend developer in China, Chinese. Forgive my English for any mistake, misunderstanding I could make. Some links (dev docs mostly) below contain sites complete in Chinese, because I can not find corresponding English ones for now.

how to debug my webpage opened in WeChat browser?

Tencent provide an IDE for developing regular web interface and WeChat-mini-program, with which developer can directly interact with:

1. JSSDK (basically a special weixin Object lives only in in-WeChat-browser);
2. API provided in WeChat-mini-program.

If you download that IDE:

1. First it will ask you is to use you WeChat to scan the QRCode, then confirm login with your WeChat account;
2. Next it will show up two square button (image below), left one is for WeChat-mini-program, the right one is for you to testing regular web page.
3. Click the right blue one, then you can find your way out, it's just something built top on project Blink.

As you can see the part of debugging regular webpage in WeChat IDE is no more than a simulator (in the WeChat-mini-program part, developer can write code directly in it), and in my experience it does have bugs, you will still need to test code in real machine.

For that Tencent provide another tool called vConsole, tutorials here, with it you can do following things directly in in-WeChat-browsers:

1. View console logs;
2. View network requests;
3. View document elements;
4. View Cookies and localStorages;
5. Execute JS command manually
6. and so on

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Do I need a official WeChat Dev account even to develop and test sample apps?

Depends.

You may know the Official Account inside WeChat, with webpages directly opened in any context inside in-WeChat-browser, it will have the ability to interact the weixin Object, or have some API like login with WeChat, pay with WeChat Pay:

1. API like close current in-WeChat-browser, hide-share-button will not required anything special, you don't need to register any Official Account;
2. But if you want yo do the Pay, Login thing, you need an Official Account and pay for the ability every year (not sure about this outside China).

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The localhost problem you faced

I don't have my working machine with me now so I can not test. Regularly I can proxy localhost with Charles then debugging in WeChat, but never do the https, I will try it later.