Refresh browser (IE, FF, Opera) via C# code - c#

I need to refresh browser via c# code and google keeps silence. Any help would be very appreciated.

The awful, round about way to do it is to attach WatiN to the process (find the HWND, attach that way, most likely) and call Browser.Refresh().

So, you can't do it with C#, because C# isn't used on the browser. You can do it through JavaScript though.
<!-- Codes by Quackit.com -->
Refresh this page
http://www.quackit.com/javascript/javascript_refresh_page.cfm
or: Meta refresh Tag
If you wanted to split hairs, you could technically, do it in silverlight, but that really just ends up calling JavaScript:
Can Silverlight initiate Page Refreshes?

Response.Redirect("the_page_you_want_to_refresh.aspx");

Consult your browser's documentation for exposed APIs that may allow you to refresh the browser page from a different application, then perform whatever appropriate interop is required to refresh the page.

Related

Windows Phone browser live html modification

I haven't looked into it very much but am struggling to find relevant information on the topic. I basically want to create a browser that applies a filter to a webpage by changing colors in a webpage. My guess is that I will have to change the html once loaded or something, would this work? Do I have other options?
PS. I don't just want to make every color darker, I would more like to invert the colors.
Edit:
If any you were wondering, I am talking about the XAML browser component that can be used in a Windows Phone application.
I think the simplest way to do that is to inject some Javascript into your page once it has loaded.
To do that, you need to set the IsScriptEnabled to true on your WebBrowser control and then subscribe to the Navigated event.
When that event occurs you can inject some JS codeby using the WebBrowser.InvokeScript method.
Here is an example of JS code that darken the page : JavaScript: Invert color on all elements of a page
If you are talking about in a PC internet browser, you can find an add-on to execute Javascript automatically, such as Greasemonkey for Firefox. If you are talking about Windows Phone's Internet Explorer, I don't really know what you could do there, as I don't think they allow add-ons.

Interacting with web pages in C#

There is a website that was created using ColdFusion (not sure if this matters or not). I need to interact with this web site. The main things I need to do are navigate to different pages and click buttons.
I have come up with two ideas on how to do this. The first is to use the WebBrowser control. With this, I could certainly navigate pages, and click buttons (According to This).
The other way is to interact with the html directly. Not sure exactly how to do this, but I am assuming I could click buttons or use HTML requests to interact with the page.
Does anyone have a recommendation on which way is better? Is there a better way that I haven't thought of?
I'd use Html AgilityPack to parse the html and then do POSTs and GETs appropriately with HttpWebRequest.
While it may be possible to use the WebBrowser control to simulate clicks and navigation you get more control with Html AgilityPack and HttpWebRequest regarding what gets sent
Did you consider Selenium? The WebDriver API is quite good, and permits a lot of things in terms of Website automation.
why not submit directly the url? that's what the button click will do.
using WebRequest.Create you can submit directly to the url. no need to load, parse and "click" the button.
HtmlAguilityPack is useful for pulling the web elements and finding tags easily. If you need to remotely "steer" a web session, though, I prefer to use WatiN. It bills itself as a web unit testing framework, but it's very useful anytime you need to fake a browser section. Further, it can remote control different browsers well enough for most tasks you'll need (like finding a button and pushing it, or a text field and filling in text if you need a login).

How to alter browser's back button functionality similar to eCommerce sites in asp.net

I have a web application, in which browser's back button functionality should be customized. It's like, whenever we click on browser's back button, it should take us to landing page(Login page), It should display error message saying that 'session expired. Please login again'.
I have gone through so many posts and even in stack overflow also, i saw few posts. But nothing worked for me. The java script approach i am using as a temporary workaround.Basically this JavaScript never allow us to go back. instead it will keep us in same page.
JavaScript i have used <script>history.go(1)</script>
Please help me to customize the functionality of Browser's back button.
Any suggestions will be really helpful to me.
Short answer: You cannot
A little longer: You shouldn't even try.
But if you insist: A Thorough Examination of "Disabling the Back Button." (from 2000, but since it is ASP I guess still valid for you :)
Newer dot net: Restrict user go back to previous page after signout
Ignore the older browsers do not support location.replace - IE3.2 is not considered older any more but ancient.
For this - you would need a custom solution and disabling back button will not help...
Usually you should not try to change the behavior of back button. But since this is the requirement, I would suggest the following:
Approach 1:
This calls for creating a navigation framework where you know which is the current page in the flow... This is only possible if you a sequence in which the pages will be called (like a wizard)
Approach 2:
Specific to your case : You can use jquery/javascript to identify if the back button is clicked.. If it is then you can do an ajax call to server to kill the session and then redirect the user to login page.
You can programmatically manipulate browser history using something like this:
window.history.back();
window.history.forward();
window.history.go(2); etc.
In HTML5 ready modern browsers like Chrome you can also do more advanced things including completely overwriting back button functionality using history.pushState() and history.replaceState() methods.
(https://developer.mozilla.org/en/DOM/Manipulating_the_browser_history)
You can also go dirty and use javascript + ajax calls to react specifically to back button events, but this will also not work on some browsers. What you ask is not a native part of a web, so no matter what you will decide to use in the end, it wont be very easy or widely supported.

c# asp.net use Windows Forms WebBrowser

I have a class of library code which uses a System.Windows.Forms.WebBrowser control to load a web page then extract information from the DOM tree, etc... I've found this to be the only reliable way to be able to parse information loaded onto a page with javascript, etc...
This worked fine when testing with console app, but when I call the same method from an asp.net page (ASP.NET MVC Controller) it crashes with a "ActiveX control '8856f961-340a-11d0-a96b-00c04fd705a2' cannot be instantiated because the current thread is not in a single-threaded apartment."... i've tried adding [STAThread] to my method but that doesn't seem to help!
Any ideas?
Thanks
Update:
I need to allow a page to complete load and execute all its javascript, then search it for text that matches a template I have already stored... Don't think HtmlAgilityPack will work? Does WatIn run the javascript?
Save yourself a lot of headache and use WatiN instead of a WebBrowser control.
See this question: Best method for Website Automation?
I believe it is impossible to get IIS to run in single thread apartment model (STA). Instead of using the WebBrowser control, you could take a look at the HTML Agility Pack. It will let your read in a web page and poke around the DOM. The WebBrowser control uses lots of computer resources that you won't have to worry about it make the switch.
Everything in the System.Windows is intended for desktop, not web stuff. I agree with Jake Pearson that you should use something else. But if you want you can try forcing the page into STA mode using this directive:
<%#Page AspCompat="true"%>
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/zwk9h2kb.aspx

A browser inside a browser

I want to create with Asp.net a browser inside a web page, so that I can process the click events of the user (for statistics analysis).
I kwnow how to do it with Winforms but I need a full online solution, so that:
The user open an standard browser and types in a start url.
In this url the menus and bars of the standard browser are hidden and
the user can see a "simulated browser", with standard buttons
(back, reload, ...).
From the Asp (c#) code behind this page I can start collecting click
data.
Thanks in advance, and keep the good work.
What you want to collect (a heat map of clicks essentially) is doable, but I don't think the way you want to go about it is very feasible.
Try this out.
I think that using this kind of solution with frames, etc. is much more feasible than embedding a browser (this amounts to writing a browser that can be served up by some kind of java/silverlight technology, not trivial).
Another idea would be that since, I assume, you have the permission of your users to track their clicks, write a greasemonkey (firefox plugin) based on the javascript in the link I provided above. You could then have all users use this plugin script combination to give you their clicks.
Web browsers are normally designed to prevent this kind of cross-site scripting vulnerability. This would only be feasible if you had the complete cooperation of all sites involved.
I don't think browsers will allow you to do this, for the simple reason that it opens up a whole bunch of security holes. If you think about it, an attack site designed like this would be able to follow people around the net tracking their actions, stealing passwords, etc. without them even knowing it was there.
This is not so simple for a web app.
Your options are:
Create a plugin (or Greasemonkey script) for your favorite browser to collect click data.
JavaScript that tracks the user's cursor position. Keep in mind that this won't be reliable if your users go to other sites from within your site thanks to the fact that JavaScript doesn't work well if scripts come from different origins.
You won't be able to make a "browser" control like you can on a desktop app because browsers intentionally don't allow web sites to be that powerful.
For the "browser in a browser" effect, you can use the tag. Remember, you'll only be able to track user actions in this iframe if the source is from the the same domain as the page it's included on.
Cross domain scripting is impossible by client-side. For obvios security reasons, you can't even read from a frame or iframe pointing to somewhere not from your own site.
Maybe the solution here is to to build something similar to the famous PHPProxy, or PHPBrowser, in this case a "ASP.NET Proxy". Its not that hard to build, you can Google for many exemples of those little codes.
While I doubt you can hide the original browsers toolbars etc, you could set up a single page that does this (it certainly wouldn't handle everything though).
This page would contain a the buttons and textbox required (to make up the inner browser UI) and a placeholder that would contain the page that the user requested. Of course the page contained in the placeholder will need to have all the links replaced so that they can be tracked (I would use linkbuttons). I'm not sure how well form submits would work.
Personally I'd use a proxy if I had control of the computer.

Categories

Resources