Can a close method be enabled on a WebView-based app?

[drthree]

I'm using some Platypus apps to run HTML5 UI fragments on behalf of a background application.
When the UI code has done its job I'd like to be able to have it close the app, but this is akin to trying to close a browser from a web page and that doesn't work.
Although I can close the window showing the gui, the WebView app itself continues to run, leading to multiple orphaned apps doing nothing. At present I have to mandate manual closing of the WebView using the "Quit" button. This is a pain and somewhat absurd if I've just hit the GUI's "OK' or "Submit" or whatever is the last step in the UI.

I have no idea whether exposing such an interface is straightforward. One might provide the close ability together with other handy features (like setting the WebView's window position, or its size to match its content, hiding/showing the Quit button, &c &c).

Does this idea gain any traction?

and thanks for a very useful tool.

[ryandesign]

I presume that your script prints HTML and/or JavaScript that tells the webview to load a URL served by the background app and then exits, and the Platypus wrapper app is configured to remain running after the script exits.

One possibility could be for your script to tell the background app the process ID number of the Platypus wrapper app, for example as a URL parameter. Then the background app can kill that process ID whenever the right moment has arrived. If your script is a shell script, then its process ID is $$, and the process ID of the Platypus wrapper app is $(ps -oppid= $$).

Another possibility could be to rewrite the script so that it stays running, and can be notified somehow by the background app when it should exit. That notification could be in the form of the background app writing a log file which your script monitors, or a status URL that your script queries periodically. This seems less good than the first suggestion, but may be useful if that other suggestion can't be used for some reason.

Another possibly useful fact is that the Platypus app will quit if the script prints the line QUITAPP. Your script would just have to figure out when the right time is to print that out.