QWebView / Qt WebKit won't open some SSL pages; redirects not allowed?

Question

Clean install of Qt SDK 1.1.4 on Windows 7 with Visual C++ 2008 SP1; I'm using Qt Creator. Why does this code not load some web pages?

#include <QtGui/QApplication>
#include <QtWebKit/QWebView>

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
    QApplication a(argc, argv);
    QWebView b;
    b.load(QUrl("https://gmail.com")); // doesn't work
    //b.load(QUrl("https://accounts.google.com")); // works
    //b.load(QUrl("https://google.com")); // doesn't work
    //b.load(QUrl("https://www.google.com")); // works
    b.show();

    return a.exec();
}

Why do some of the URLs not work, and others do?

I think the google.com / www.google.com is especially telling; google.com normally redirects to www.google.com. And gmail.com is redirecting to accounts.google.com. Is WebKit not allowing secure pages to redirect? If so, how to fix that?

By the way, Qt SDK 1.1.4 seems to include OpenSSL; I noticed its presence at C:\QtSDK\Desktop\Qt\4.7.4\msvc2008\bin\ssleay32.dll. Also notice that some pages seem to work, just not others.

EDIT: Two more URLs:

b.load(QUrl("https://support.motionview3d.com/help/_media/images/directory.png")); // doesn't work
b.load(QUrl("https://mail.google.com")); // works

Again, both of these work fine in other web browsers.

Answer 1

You are probably getting SSL errors which you can handle in a slot. Although not the best final solution, you can use the slot to ignore all SSL errors. I did this by subclassing QWebView:

qwebview.h:

#ifndef WEBVIEW_H
#define WEBVIEW_H

#include <QWebView>

class WebView : public QWebView
{
    Q_OBJECT

    public:
        WebView(QWidget *parent = 0);
    private slots:
        void handleSslErrors(QNetworkReply* reply, const QList<QSslError> &errors);
};

#endif // WEBVIEW_H

qwebview.cpp:

#include "webview.h"
#include <QNetworkReply>
#include <QtDebug>
#include <QSslError>

WebView::WebView(QWidget *parent) :
    QWebView(parent)
{
    load(QUrl("https://gmail.com"));

    connect(page()->networkAccessManager(),
            SIGNAL(sslErrors(QNetworkReply*, const QList<QSslError> & )),
            this,
            SLOT(handleSslErrors(QNetworkReply*, const QList<QSslError> & )));  
}

void WebView::handleSslErrors(QNetworkReply* reply, const QList<QSslError> &errors)
{
    qDebug() << "handleSslErrors: ";
    foreach (QSslError e, errors)
    {
        qDebug() << "ssl error: " << e;
    }

    reply->ignoreSslErrors();
}

main.cpp"

#include <QApplication>
#include "WebView.h"

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
    QApplication a(argc, argv);
    WebView w;
    w.show();
    return a.exec();
}

Running this should produce debug output like this:

handleSslErrors:  
ssl error:  "The host name did not match any of the valid hosts for this certificate" 
ssl error:  "No error" 
ssl error:  "No error" 
...

In your final program, you will of course want to handle SSL errors properly :)