Question

How can I control IE form C#? I know that via COM you can do all sorts of interesting stuff, but looking at the SHDocVw namespace once I import the reference into my project there doesn’t seem to be that many methods. For example, how would I force a button to be clicked? Or set or read the value of a specific control on a page? In general, how can I individually control an object in IE though .NET?

Answer 1

Here are some samples from code I’ve written to control IE, maybe it can help:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.ComponentModel;
using System.Data;
using System.Drawing;
using System.Text;
using System.Windows.Forms;
using System.Threading;

//...

void SetField(WebBrowser wb, string formname, string fieldname, string fieldvalue) {
  HtmlElement f = wb.Document.Forms[formname].All[fieldname];
  f.SetAttribute("value", fieldvalue);
}

void SetRadio(WebBrowser wb, string formname, string fieldname, bool isChecked) {
  HtmlElement f = wb.Document.Forms[formname].All[fieldname];
  f.SetAttribute("checked", isChecked ? "True" : "False");
}

void SubmitForm(WebBrowser wb, string formname) {
  HtmlElement f = wb.Document.Forms[formname];
  f.InvokeMember("submit");
}

void ClickButtonAndWait(WebBrowser wb, string buttonname,int timeOut) {
  HtmlElement f = wb.Document.All[buttonname];
  webReady = false;
  f.InvokeMember("click");
  DateTime endTime = DateTime.Now.AddSeconds(timeOut);
  bool finished = false;
  while (!finished) {
    if (webReady)
      finished = true;
    Application.DoEvents();
    if (aborted)
      throw new EUserAborted();
    Thread.Sleep(50);
    if ((timeOut != 0) && (DateTime.Now>endTime)) {
      finished = true;
    }
  }
}

void ClickButtonAndWait(WebBrowser wb, string buttonname) {
  ClickButtonAndWait(wb, buttonname, 0);
}

void Navigate(string url,int timeOut) {
  webReady = false;
  webBrowser1.Navigate(url);
  DateTime endTime = DateTime.Now.AddSeconds(timeOut);
  bool finished = false;
  while (!finished) {
    if (webReady)
      finished = true;
    Application.DoEvents();
    if (aborted)
      throw new EUserAborted();
    Thread.Sleep(50);
    if ((timeOut != 0) && (DateTime.Now > endTime)) {
      finished = true;
    }
  }
}

private void webBrowser1_DocumentCompleted(object sender, WebBrowserDocumentCompletedEventArgs e) {
  webReady = true;
}