We Keep Coding

C# IE11 Automation - Cannot Connect To Open IE Window

I'm trying to connect to an Internet Explorer window that is already open. Once connected I need to send some keystrokes (via SendKeys) to the IE window for some processing. I've got the following code below that works up until the SendKeys command. It finds the IE window titled "Graphics Database". When it hits "SendKeys.Send("{TAB}");" I get the error "An unhandled exception of type 'System.NullReferenceException' occurred".
Additional information: I also get the following on the NullReferenceException error. The weird thing is if I code to open a new IE window and then use SendKeys it works fine. Connecting to an existing windows seems to cause this issue.
SendKeys cannot run inside this application because the application is not handling Windows messages. Either change the application to handle messages, or use the SendKeys.SendWait method.
Can anyone please help me figure out what to do to fix this?
Andy
InternetExplorer IE = null;
// Get all browser objects
ShellWindows allBrowsers = new ShellWindows();
if (allBrowsers.Count == 0)
{
throw new Exception("Cannot find IE");
}
// Attach to IE program process
foreach (InternetExplorer browser in allBrowsers)
{
if (browser.LocationName == "Graphics Database")
{
MessageBox.Show ("Found IE browser '" + browser.LocationName + "'");
IE = (InternetExplorer)browser;
}
}
IE.Visible = true;
System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(2000);
SendKeys.Send("{TAB}");
SendKeys.Send("G1007");
SendKeys.Send("{ENTER}");

I was able to resolve this issue. I could never get the IE.Visible = true to work. This seemed to do nothing in my code. I had to use the SetForegroundWindow() to set the focus to the IE window.
// Find the IE window
int hWnd = FindWindow(null, "Graphics Database - Internet Explorer");
if (hWnd > 0) // The IE window was found.
{
// Bring the IE window to the front.
SetForegroundWindow(hWnd);
This site helped me immensely with getting the SetForegroundWindow() working.
http://forums.codeguru.com/showthread.php?460402-C-General-How-do-I-activate-an-external-Window

Andy please bear with me as this will be long. First you are going to want to look mshtml documentation and Dom. https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa741314(v=vs.85).aspx I don't know why automation is so convoluted but it is. The UIautomation class works great for windows apps but has nothing really for IE that I've been able to find. Others will point to third parties like waitn and selenium. Waitn appears to no longer be supported and selenium won't let you grab an open IE browser. I have gone down this path recently because I wanted to be able to create an app to store my web passwords and auto fill them in since I can't save my username and passwords in browser due to security restrictions. I have an example here and hope it helps. First open up IE and navigate to http://aavtrain.com/index.asp. Then have a console project with mshtml referenced and shdocvw. Here is code below. It gets the window then finds elements for username, password, and submit. then populates the username and password and clicks the submit button. I don't have a login to this site so it won't log you in. I have been using it for my testing. Problem I have is sites with javascript login forms. If you get further with this info please post back as I am still trying to evolve the concepts and create something reusable.
SHDocVw.ShellWindows shellWindows = new SHDocVw.ShellWindows();
Console.WriteLine("Starting Search\n\n\n");
foreach (SHDocVw.InternetExplorer ie in shellWindows)
{
if (ie.LocationURL.Contains("aavtrain"))
{
Console.WriteLine(ie.LocationURL);
Console.WriteLine("\n\n\n\n");
Console.WriteLine("FOUND!\n");
mshtml.HTMLDocument document = ie.Document;
mshtml.IHTMLElementCollection elCol = document.getElementsByName("user_name");
mshtml.IHTMLElementCollection elCol2 = document.getElementsByName("password");
mshtml.IHTMLElementCollection elCol3 = document.getElementsByName("Submit");
Console.WriteLine("AutofillPassword");
foreach (mshtml.IHTMLInputElement i in elCol)
{
i.defaultValue = "John";
}
foreach (mshtml.IHTMLInputElement i in elCol2)
{
i.defaultValue = "Password";
}
Console.WriteLine("Will Click Button in 2 seconds");
Thread.Sleep(2000);
foreach (mshtml.HTMLInputButtonElement i in elCol3)
{
i.click();
}
}
}
Console.WriteLine("Finished");

Accessing Internet Explorer with Shdocvw results in UnauthorizedAccessException

I'm working on a portion of an application that has a 'finder' tool that allows the user to drag and drop a finder onto an application or internet explorer web browser so that our program can locate it and do what it needs to do. This portion of the application was not under any active development for the last few years (last time I believe IE 7 was the latest browser), but it has worked for IE 9 and below. Starting at IE 10 we get problems, and I specifically am using IE 11.
The following code locates the different Internet explorer windows (including tabs) and file explorer windows. We made a quick VB script for extra testing -
dim objShell
dim objShellWindows
set objShell = CreateObject("shell.application")
set objShellWindows = objShell.Windows
if (not objShellWindows is nothing) then
WScript.Echo objShellWindows.Count
for each win in objShellWindows
wscript.Echo TypeName(win)
WScript.Echo win.LocationUrl
WScript.Echo win.LocationName
WScript.Echo win.HWND
next
end if
set objShellWindows = nothing
set objShell = nothing
The above code will execute without error, and it gives the URL and title bar name of all the tabs we have open.
Below is our C# code. It attempts to get the main IE window (not the tab). this.Handle is the handle of this main IE window that the finder tool gets when the user drops it. We're attempting to iterate through the open windows and find the Internet Explorer window that the user selected. This particular snippet is changed slightly from our original implementation, but the end result is the same. As soon as it hits test = window.Item(i) it throws a UnauthorizedAccessException.
ShellWindows windows = null;
IWebBrowser2 shellWindow = null;
IHTMLDocument2 actualDoc = null;
Type shellApplicationType = Type.GetTypeFromProgID("Shell.Application");
Shell32.Shell shellInterface = (Shell32.Shell)Activator.CreateInstance(shellApplicationType);
windows = (ShellWindows)shellInterface.Windows();
bool found = false;
for (int i = 0; i < windows.Count; i++)
{
try
{
object test;
try
{
test = windows.Item(i); //Exception here
shellWindow = (IWebBrowser2)test;
}
catch
{
}
if (shellWindow != null && (IntPtr)shellWindow.HWND == this.Handle)
{
//the rest of the code gets the correct tab from the main IE window
This is the original unedited code from when we first revisited this portion of the program.
ShellWindows windows = null;
IWebBrowser2 shellWindow =null;
IHTMLDocument2 actualDoc = null;
windows = new SHDocVw.ShellWindowsClass();
bool found = false;
for (int i = 0; i < windows.Count; i++)
{
try{
shellWindow = windows.Item(i) as SHDocVw.IWebBrowser2; //Exception here
if (shellWindow != null && (IntPtr)shellWindow.HWND == this.Handle)
{
I would also like to note that instead of a for loop I have tried a foreach loop that followed this syntax
foreach(IWebBrowser2 browser in windows)
and
foreach(InternetExplorer browser in windows)
In those instances, the loop skips over the IE window.
I have looked at IE's security settings. I have disabled Enhanced Protection Mode and allowed cross domain. There does not seem to be a lot of information on this issue, and every approach we try seems to always end up with an UnauthorizedAccessException.
Edit: In response to Hans answer, I do not have any anti malware running on this machine. It is a virtual machine with windows 7 that has the latest SP and updates (no microsoft security essentials). I tried running the app on a 32 bit machine with similar settings and it also failed. After testing it on IE 11, I uninstalled IE 11, rebooted, tried IE 10 (it failed, same error), uninstalled IE 10, rebooted, tried IE 9, and it worked without making any other changes to the system.
Here is the SSCCE as requested by Hans. This code actually works on my target machine. I will return to this post in the next day or two while I handle other tasks that require my attention.
I build this as a 32 bit console app, and ran it on a 64bit machine.
using System;
using SHDocVw;
using mshtml;
namespace GetBrowserSSCCE
{
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
ShellWindows windows = null;
IWebBrowser2 shellWindow = null;
windows = new SHDocVw.ShellWindowsClass();
for (int i = 0; i < windows.Count; i++)
{
try
{
shellWindow = windows.Item(i) as SHDocVw.IWebBrowser2;
Console.WriteLine(string.Format("Window Found. HWND: {0}\nName: {1}", shellWindow.HWND, shellWindow.Name));
}
catch (UnauthorizedAccessException ex)
{
Console.WriteLine("UnauthorizedAccessException caught. Exception Text: " +ex.Message);
}
}
Console.ReadLine();
}
}
}

That this fails in your C# program but not when you run it from the VBScript interpreter points strongly to an environmental problem. Both use the exact same shell interface. The specific exception (underlying error code is 0x8007005) has been reported before on the interwebs but never diagnosed.
First thing you should focus on whenever you have an environmental problem, particularly the kind associated with access rights, is the anti-malware installed on the machine. Disable it and try again.
Second one you should focus on is a quirk associated with ShellWindows, it doesn't just enumerate Internet Explorer windows but also Windows Explorer windows. You've been looking at having sufficient access to IE but that isn't enough, this code can also fail if you happen to have an Explorer window opened and there's an access problem with the explorer.exe process. Do note that your Activator.CreateInstance() method call is not equivalent to the VBScript code, Activator.GetObject() is. So your changes would actually make the problem worse if this is underlying problem.
Third detail that's worth checking is the bitness of your process. By default, your VBScript code will run in the 64-bit script interpreter on a machine that boots the 64-bit version of Windows. But the default setting for a C# project is to run in 32-bit mode. Right-click your EXE project, Properties, Build tab and tinker with the Platform target setting, the 'Prefer 32-bit' checkbox if you see it. This is not an explanation for the error code, it can however affect the effectiveness of anti-malware to intrude.

Same process IDs of all IE windows

When I manually launch Internet Explorer windows, each one of them gets a different PID.
However, suppose I have manually opened one browser window and it gets PID 12345 and then run WaitiN which opens some browser windows, the PIDs of all WaiiN windows becomes 12345. How can I change the behaviour so that WatiN works like it works manually.
I need the PIDs so that I can close the broswer windows opened by WatiN in my cleanup code and make sure I close the PIDs of browser windows opened only by WatiN.
EDIT:
Code I am using is:
//Where I am using WatiN 1
IE ReportWindow = IE.AttachToNoWait<IE>(Find.ByTitle("New Activity Recap"), 120);
ReportWindowPID = ReportWindow.ProcessID;
//Where I am using WatiN 2
IE ReportWindow = IE.AttachToNoWait<IE>(Find.ByTitle("New Activity Recap"), 120);
ReportWindowPID = ReportWindow.ProcessID;
//Cleanup code
foreach (Process p in System.Diagnostics.Process.GetProcessesByName("iexplore"))
{
if (p.Id == ApplicationWindowPID || p.Id == ReportWindowPID)
{
try
{
p.Kill();
p.WaitForExit();
}
catch
{
}
}
}
The above code is closing the 2 windows opened by WatiN as well as other windows.
PS: ANy code which kills the browser windows by a URL can also do because the base URL is going to be the same in the 2 WatiN windows.

watin attach to manually started window keeps failing

IList<string> values = new List<string>();
var instance = Find.By("hwnd", "110CC");
...
if(instance != null)
{
var ie = Browser.AttachTo<IE>(instance);
The browser instance is manually started by the tester in case this makes any difference.
This just doesn't work for me I keep getting an exception from watin saying that it can't find a window with that handle.
I got the handle with Spy++.
I tried searching by window title or window url also but it also didn't work.
Is there any way to do this?
Thank you

The below works as expected / no errors. WatiN 2.1, IE9, Win7
Before running the code, open an IE browser and point it at cnn.com
IE browser = Browser.AttachTo<IE>(Find.ByUrl("www.cnn.com"));
browser.TextField("hdr-search-box").TypeText("searchy");

How to handle multiple tabs in internet explorer with the IWebBrowserApp com interface?

I am using the following code (C#) based on the IWebBrowserApp com interface to find the Internet explorer window that matches the page I am trying to find, based on the title of the page.
I works fine if the page is on the first tab, but it does not work if its a later tab. So how do I get access to the tabs in internet explorer?
objSW = new ShellWindows();
IEnumerator ie = objSW.GetEnumerator();
while (ie.MoveNext())
{
obj = ie.Current;
app = (IWebBrowserApp)ie.Current;
System.Object docObj = app.Document;
HTMLDocumentClass hdoc = (HTMLDocumentClass)docObj;
if (hdoc.title.Contains(title)) matches.Add(app.HWND, app);
//do something
}

Sorry, but there's no supported API for tab enumeration/manipulation in IE9 or earlier.