Question

Navigating MSHTML from C# without a WebBrowser control

Asked by: Tim85

I would appreciate some advice on how to correctly exploit MSHTML from within a C# application (without the use of a WebBrowser control).

Specifically, I am trying to use MSHTML to load a sequence of web pages that will be programmatically scraped. I understand that it is normal to use a Windows Forms or WPF WebBrowser control with MSHTML, but this is not possible in my case because the application I am developing is a class library and (as far as I can tell) the WebBrowser controls cannot operate without a window handle assigned by a hosting form.

Therefore, the approach I have adopted is the one described here:

http://radio.javaranch.com/balajidl/2006/01/18/1137606354980.html

This technique works as described and I am able to load pages and to access their DOM content through the MSHTML API. I have also succeeded in injecting JavaScript into a loaded page and invoking functions using the invokeScript() method, so I know that the scripting engine is running correctly.

Unfortunately, although this approach seems almost perfect for my needs, it fails when attemting to navigate from a loaded page (either by invoking click() on a hyperlink or submit() on a form). I have tried this using both JavaScript (within a loaded page) and via the API, but neither method results in MSHTML sending out a request for a new page (verified using Fiddler2).

I have proved that MSHTML is capable of issuing its own requests in this configuration, because I have succeeded in loading a sequence of pages by successive calls to the Navigate() method, but I can't find any way to get it to navigate from within a loaded document.

Any ideas would be very much appreciated.

Thanks,
Tim

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Asked On
2009-02-23 at 06:47:50ID24168307
Tags

MSHTML

,

C#

,

WebBrowser

Topic

ActiveX

Participating Experts
1
Points
500
Comments
4

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Answers

 

by: tgerbertPosted on 2009-02-23 at 08:35:09ID: 23712953

I can't answer your question directly, however you should be able to use the WebBrowser control in a class library without any forms.  You will, however, need a reference to System.Windows.Forms.  Example below has a simple class that just gets the title of a web page:

using System;
using System.Windows.Forms;
 
namespace WebBrowserClassLibraryTest
{
	public class MyWebBrowser
	{
		public string GetTitleOfUrl(string url)
		{
			string returnValue;
			WebBrowser wb = new WebBrowser();
 
			wb.Navigate(url);
			while (wb.ReadyState != WebBrowserReadyState.Complete)
				Application.DoEvents();
			returnValue = wb.Document.Title;
 
			return returnValue;
		}
	}
}
                                              
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by: Tim85Posted on 2009-02-23 at 09:07:46ID: 31550096

Thank you for your very quick solution - it works!

However, now that you have persuaded me that it is feasible to host a WebBrowser in a class library, I am tempted to use the GeckoWebBrowser (see http://geckofx.org/) because it operates completely independently of IE. However, when I try your code above
with GeckoWebBrowser it refuses to Navigate() until the window handle has been assigned.

Can you suggest any elegant way of faking this in a class library? (Sorry, I appreciate that this is a completely different question and I will post it separately if necessary).

 

by: tgerbertPosted on 2009-02-23 at 09:32:35ID: 23713612

You can call CreateControl() on the GeckoWebBrowser object to manually create a handle for it.

You could also download/modify the source so this isn't necessary (I'm thinking this probably should be in the constructor for GeckoWebBrowser).

using System;
using System.Threading;
using System.Windows.Forms;
using Skybound.Gecko;
 
namespace WebBrowserClassLibraryTest
{
	public class MyWebBrowser
	{
 
		private GeckoWebBrowser gwb = new GeckoWebBrowser();
 
		public MyWebBrowser()
		{
			Xpcom.Initialize(@"C:\Program Files\XULRunner");
			gwb.CreateControl();
		}
 
		public string GetTitleOfUrl(string url)
		{
			gwb.Navigate(url);
 
			while (gwb.IsBusy)
			{
				Application.DoEvents();
				Thread.Sleep(100);
			}
 
			return gwb.Document.Title;
 
		}
 
	}
}
                                              
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by: Tim85Posted on 2009-02-23 at 10:24:25ID: 23714163

Incredible !!!!! Thank you so much.

Tim

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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