Introduction
The WPF WebBrowser control is extremely sad in the capabilities it provides, and even in supporting the MVVM pattern. I created a control to enhance the capabilities of the WebBrower to support easy interface using ICommand for forward and back buttons, and the MVVM design pattern. Since Microsoft made things even sillier because the WebBrowser is Sealed, I had to inherit from the ContentControl and this ContentControl only contains a WebBrowser control.
The following are the capabilities this control has:
NavigateString (string) DependencyProperty which will execute the WebBrowser Navigate method.HeaderString (string) DependencyProperty which will set the cookies for the brower. The string contains the cookie items separated by a ";" with each cooking being the key, an equal sign ("=") and then the value.- An
IsSuccessful DependencyProperty that is set to null when navigation is started, and then changes to true if it appears that the navigation was successful, and false is not. The way it is determined that the navigation was not successful is if the Document Url property starts with "res://ieframe.dll".
- A
Body DependencyProperty that will allow the content of the WebBrowser to be defined by a string containing HTML.
- A
BrowseForward and BrowseBack ICommand that allows a Button to be bound to the WebBrowserControl for navigation forward and back.
- The silencing of error messages by the browser that are probably due to javascript errors (I was having a lot of trouble with this on some sites I browsed to).
- A way to discover and update the Internet Explorer browser version used by the control.
- Ability to disable/enable
WebBrowser ContextMenu (disabled by default)
Using the code
This is an example of using the control using the MVVM design pattern
<local:WebBrowserControl x:Name="Browser"
HorizontalAlignment="Stretch"
VerticalAlignment="Stretch"
HeaderString="{Binding WebCookies}"
IsSuccessful="{Binding IsSuccessful, Mode=OneWayToSource}"
NavigateString="{Binding WebUri}" />
Note
The sample uses the URI "http://request.urih.com/" because this will show the cookies.
The sample above has red boxes to show where the token information can be found.
Conclusion
This control could be significantly enhanced, but includes a lot of snippets that should be quite useful to anyone trying to implement a WebBrowser in WPF, and also is a good template for implementing enhancements. If anyone has any thoughts on how this can be improved, I am definitely interested.
History
- 2016-11-28: Initial Version
- 2017-01-20: Added abiltiy to remove
WebBrowser ContextMenu (thanks to code provided by Simon Mourier
