Question

I would like to be able to make an application that uses open layers directly on my WPF application. I found that I can create a browser object and have that invoke JavaScript, but I don’t need a full browser. Is there some scripting object that I can use and bypass the browser object all together?

Answer 1

You don’t need a web browser or the WebBrowser control to use JavaScript within NET Framework. NET Framework has a built-in JavaScript implementation that implements a superset of JavaScript / ECMAScript, as described here and here.

To use NET Framework’s built in JavaScript implementation:

1. Add a reference to the Microsoft.JScript assembly
2. Use new JScriptCodeProvider().CreateCompiler().CompileAssemblyFromSource(...).CompiledAssembly to compile your JavaScript to an assembly
3. Invoke code in the compiled assembly as usual (GetType/GetMethod/Invoke)

Note that if your JavaScript code is designed to manipulate a DOM or use other features of a web browser, you can still use the NET Framework’s version of JavaScript but you will have to provide the expected objects yourself.