Introduction
In your project, you probably need to generate dynamic HTML, or to get an HTML fragment from a web service and to display it in a WebBrowser control. In those cases, you would not load at any time the JS, CSS, or images from the network but you could include it in your application package (XAP).
Solution
To demonstrate how to do that, we will take an example that will get the HTML code from a web service:
<div data-role='fieldcontain'>
<fieldset data-role='controlgroup'>
<legend>Do you agree to this request?</legend>
<input type='checkbox' name='agree-1' id='agree-1' />
<label for='agree-1'>I agree</label>
</fieldset>
</div>
As you see, this HTML calls data-role from jQuery Mobile. In our demo, we will include the jqueryMobile JS and CSS files in our XAP package.
The first step is to add your files in a directory, for example: HTML and to set the "Build Action" to "Content".
The next step is to concat the HTML received from the WebService with the our HTML body. For that, we will write a method BuildHTML.
public string BuildHTML(string htmlFromWS)
{
StringBuilder html = new StringBuilder(@"<!DOCTYPE html>
<html class=""ui-mobile-rendering"">
<head>
<meta charset=""utf-8"" />
<meta name=""viewport""
content=""initial-scale=1.0; maximum-scale=1.0"" />
<link rel=""stylesheet""
type=""text/css""
href=""/html/jquery.mobile.structure-1.0.1.min.css"" />
<link rel=""stylesheet""
type=""text/css""
href=""/html/style.css"" />
<script type=""text/javascript""
src=""/html/jquery-1.7.1.min.js""></script>
<script type=""text/javascript""
src=""/html/jquery.mobile-1.0.1.min.js""></script>
</head>
<body style=""-webkit-user-select: none;"">
<div style=""padding:80px 0 0 0""
data-role=""page"">
<div data-role=""content"">");
html.Append(htmlFromWS);
html.Append("</div></div></body></html>");
return html.ToString();
}
As you can see, the CSS and the JavaScript is referenced with the URL /html/... This means that the webbrowser will load the files from isolatedstorage, with a relative URI. Unfortunately, adding the files as Content in the solution doesn't add them into IsolatedStorage. For that, we will write the method CopyContentToIsolatedStorage.
public static void CopyContentToIsolatedStorage(string file)
{
IsolatedStorageFile iso = IsolatedStorageFile.GetUserStoreForApplication();
if (iso.FileExists(file))
return;
var fullDirectory = System.IO.Path.GetDirectoryName(file);
if (!iso.DirectoryExists(fullDirectory))
iso.CreateDirectory(fullDirectory);
using (Stream input = Application.GetResourceStream(new Uri(file, UriKind.Relative)).Stream)
{
using (IsolatedStorageFileStream output = iso.CreateFile(file))
{
byte[] readBuffer = new byte[4096];
int bytesRead = -1;
while ((bytesRead = input.Read(readBuffer, 0, readBuffer.Length)) > 0)
{
output.Write(readBuffer, 0, bytesRead);
}
}
}
}
and now, you can add this code in the beginning of your page:
CopyContentToIsolatedStorage("html/themes/images/ajax-loader.png");
CopyContentToIsolatedStorage("html/themes/images/icons-18-black.png");
CopyContentToIsolatedStorage("html/themes/images/icons-18-white.png");
CopyContentToIsolatedStorage("html/themes/images/icons-36-black.png");
CopyContentToIsolatedStorage("html/themes/images/icons-36-white.png");
CopyContentToIsolatedStorage("html/jquery-1.7.1.min.js");
CopyContentToIsolatedStorage("html/jquery.mobile-1.0.1.min.js");
CopyContentToIsolatedStorage("html/style.css");
CopyContentToIsolatedStorage("html/jquery.mobile.structure-1.0.1.min.css");
and then, we just have to concat the HTML and send it to the WebBrowser control. But be careful, there is a tip to force the WebBrowser to load the HTML and its files! You have to save an HTML file into IsolatedStorage in the root folder of your css/js files.
string htmlFromWS = ...;
string html = BuildHTML(htmlFromWS);
var bytes = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(html);
IsolatedStorageFile iso = IsolatedStorageFile.GetUserStoreForApplication();
using (IsolatedStorageFileStream output = iso.CreateFile("html/index.html"))
{
output.Write(bytes, 0, bytes.Length);
}
wb.Navigate(new Uri("html/index.html", UriKind.Relative));
And that's it, the WebBrowser control will load the CSS, JS, and your HTML from IsolatedStorage! You can find the source code here.
