Question

I am (still) using Visual Studio 2005 and wanting to embed a webkit browser within a c# winforms application, preferably as a winforms control.

I am looking for a simple example of either CefGlue or CefSharp to get started with, along with the minimum necessary dlls. I cannot make any sense of the CefSharp sample on GitHub.

Answer 1

It is pretty easy however very sadly documented.

To get it working, I made a new Forms application and added a toolstripContainer to my form. Also added references to CefSharp.dll and CefSharp.WinForms.dll to my project.

This is my code for my class:

public partial class frmBrowser : Form, IRequestHandler
{
    private readonly WebView web_view;

    public frmBrowser()
    {
        InitializeComponent();
        web_view = new WebView("http://stackoverflow.com", new BrowserSettings());
        web_view.Dock = DockStyle.Fill; 
        web_view.RequestHandler = this;
        tsContainer.ContentPanel.Controls.Add(web_view);
    }

    #region IRequestHandler Members

    bool IRequestHandler.OnBeforeBrowse(IWebBrowser browser, IRequest request,
                               NavigationType naigationvType, bool isRedirect)
    {
        System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine("OnBeforeBrowse");
        return false;
    }

    bool IRequestHandler.OnBeforeResourceLoad(IWebBrowser browser,
                                     IRequestResponse requestResponse)
    {
        System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine("OnBeforeResourceLoad");
        IRequest request = requestResponse.Request;

        if (request.Url.EndsWith("header.png"))
        {
            MemoryStream stream = new System.IO.MemoryStream();

            FileStream file = new FileStream(@"C:\tmp\header.png", FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read, FileShare.Read);
            byte[] bytes = new byte[file.Length];
            file.Read(bytes, 0, (int)file.Length);
            stream.Write(bytes, 0, (int)file.Length);
            file.Close();

            requestResponse.RespondWith(stream, "image/png");
        }

        return false;
    }

    void IRequestHandler.OnResourceResponse(IWebBrowser browser, string url,
                                   int status, string statusText,
                                   string mimeType, WebHeaderCollection headers)
    {
        System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine("OnResourceResponse");
    }

    #endregion
}

The region with the request handlers is optional, thats for when you want to influence the calls. In my example I rerouted the call to the header image to an image on my c drive.

That’s it what you need for code. You also need to have the following files addes to the folder of your executable:

• avcodec-54.dll
• avformat-54.dll
• avutil-51.dll
• chrome.pak
• icudt.dll
• libcef.dll
• libEGL.dll
• libGLESv2.dll
• the locales folder

Some of these files are optional tho, based upon what you want to do with them, but you can google that.