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");

WatiN doesn't find anything

I'm new to C# and I'm trying to do an application that automatize Internet Explorer.
When I click a button, the application does :
using ( var Browser = new IE())
{
Browser.GoTo("http://testweb.com");
Browser.TextField(Find.ByName("username")).TypeText("User");
Browser.TextField(Find.ByName("password")).TypeText("Pass");
}
But it doesn't write anything. It navigates to the web but...

Try this:
IE ie = null;
ie = new IE();
ie.GoTo("Link");
ie.WaitForComplete();
At least to get started.
For the other bit, you need to get an exact identification and then you can tell WaTiN to interact with it.
Textfield userTextBox = ie.Textfield(Find.ByName("name"));
userTextBox.TypeText("user");
This may seem banal but now you can add a peek definition in your code and see if "userTextBox" gets found by name. If it doesn't you need to find it through another method (ID or class).

Selenium doesn't recognize new opened window -Selenium C#

Seems like I'm facing some sync issues in my code.
during my process, I'm clicking a button which opens a new window.
I'm swicthing to the new window by the following code.
_webdriver.SwitchTo().Window(_webdriver.WindowHandles.Last();
Then, I'm inserting data into fields within the next window.
problem is that sometimes the objects in the "next window" are not being found.
I'm getting : "can't find element" error.
for me it seems like a sync problem , meaning , DOM issues.
so I have tried using :
_webdriver.Manage().Timeouts().ImplicitlyWait(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(10));
and I even tried :
Thread.Sleep(3000);
Unfortunately , seems like most of the times the problem is that selenium didn't switch to the new window(could see it when debugging).
I'll be happy to have your assistance.

You could wait for two windows and then set the context to the new one:
var wait = new WebDriverWait(driver, TimeSpan.FromSeconds(20));
// wait for 2 windows
ReadOnlyCollection<String> handles = null;
wait.Until((d) => (handles = driver.WindowHandles).Count > 1);
// set the context on the new window
driver.SwitchTo().Window(handles[handles.IndexOf(driver.CurrentWindowHandle) ^ 1]);

i am not sure how this is done in C# but i think selenium is same you just have to use C# syntax for loop.
//Switch to newly opened window (JAVA)
for(String winHandle : driver.getWindowHandles()){
driver.switchTo().window(winHandle);
}
this is how i do in Java. you will get driver.getWindowHandles() same method in C# as well, if i am not wrong as this is selenium method.
hope this is helpful to you.

C# open IE9 window and attach

I have a website that uses pre-installed IE plugins to provide secure communication. I don't have access to this plugins code, so if I want to parse pages from this server I have to do it with IE. Otherwise error message shows up.
I want to create a C# program that will open this site and get it's body.
I've tried to open the IE using
InternetExplorer ie = new InternetExplorer();
unfortunately this page caused not loading of plugins or not reacting to javascript that should make redirection.
I'm trying to do it with solution provided in http://www.codeproject.com/script/Articles/ViewDownloads.aspx?aid=9683 However there's a problem - I cannot attach to the IE after creating the process.
ShellWindows m_IEFoundBrowsers = new ShellWindowsClass();
foreach(InternetExplorer Browser in m_IEFoundBrowsers) {
if(Browser.HWND == (int)m_Proc.MainWindowHandle) {
_IE = Browser;
break;
}
}
this code causes InvalidCastException. When I took a look at the Process tree, I've realised that my app launches console, that launches IE - that's the problem as far as I understand. Please help me in attaching to newly opened IE window... I've tried getting the parent of process running Browser, however it failed...

Locate the browser by finding which browser.Document is HTMLDocument and the LocationName or LocationURL specified. Attach that browser instance to your InternetExplorer object by typecasting browser as InternetExplorer. This code works with IE 11 on my system, and allows interaction with that IE browser instance.
InternetExplorer ie = null
// Launch IE program
// 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.Document is HTMLDocument && browser.LocationName == "My Test Web Site")
{
Console.WriteLine("Found IE browser '" + browser.LocationName + "'");
ie = (InternetExplorer)browser;
}
}
if (ie == null)
throw new Exception("Failed to attach to IE");

Problem hiding Internet Explorer in WatiN, even when using Settings.Instance.MakeNewIeInstanceVisible = false

This question is more of a follow-up to this one:
Hiding Internet Explorer when WatiN is run
Like the person who asked that original question, I also want to stop IE from being shown when my WatiN tests are running, but even when using this setting in a seemingly correct manner (code snippet below), it still ends up showing an empty IE window initially (although it does not show the test behavior/web page interaction).
Is it possible to stop the window from showing at all, or is this as good as it gets?
My helper method to create a new IE instance:
public static IE CreateNewBrowserInstance(string url = DefaultAppUrl)
{
Settings.Instance.MakeNewIeInstanceVisible = false;
Settings.Instance.AutoMoveMousePointerToTopLeft = false;
Settings.Instance.AutoStartDialogWatcher = false;
return new IE(url, true);
}

You can Hide window after initializing new IE instance
browser.ShowWindow(NativeMethods.WindowShowStyle.Hide);