binding cefSharp client with Selenium Chrome Driver c#

Question

I found this https://bitbucket.org/chromiumembedded/cef/wiki/UsingChromeDriver link which has java binding for cef client and Selenium Driver.

So I prepared one for me to use it with c# windows application. what i have done is created a new winapp project x86 that only contains the following code that runs with no error or issue:

using CefSharp;
using CefSharp.WinForms;
namespace ClientBrowser
{
  public partial class Form1 : Form
  {
    public Form1()
    {
        InitializeComponent();
    }

    public ChromiumWebBrowser browser;
    private void Form1_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        var settings = new CefSettings();
        settings.CefCommandLineArgs.Add("enable-npapi", "1");
        settings.IgnoreCertificateErrors = true;
        //settings.CefCommandLineArgs.Add("enable-system-flash", "1");
        Cef.Initialize(settings);
        browser = new ChromiumWebBrowser("");
        this.Controls.Add(browser);
        browser.Dock = DockStyle.Fill;
    }
  }
}

above project is to act as cef client for the below new winapp project x86 below:

    private void Form1_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        try {
            var options = new ChromeOptions();
            options.BinaryLocation = @"path/ClientBrowser.exe";
            //options.AddArgument("--log-level=3");
            var service = ChromeDriverService.CreateDefaultService();
            //service.HideCommandPromptWindow = true;
            driver = new ChromeDriver(service,options); //chromedriver.exe

            driver.Navigate().GoToUrl("http://stackoverflow.com/");
        }
        catch (Exception ex)
        {
            Console.WriteLine(ex.Message);
        }
    }

now when I run the new above Project,

chromedriver.exe says:

Starting ChromeDriver 2.21.371459 (36d3d07f660ff2bc1bf28a75d1cdabed0983e7c4) on port 57883 Only local connections are allowed.

and then

ClientBrowser.exe opens up with nothing displayed in it and no error encountered but after 60 sec I am getting:

The HTTP request to the remote WebDriver server for URL http://localhost:57883/session timed out after 60 seconds.

but it should open http://stackoverflow.com/ for me, I don't know what I am doing wrong, I have not included any selenium-server-standalone-x.y.z.jar? do I need this, if yes please any one let me know how do I include it.

also tried running it with Administrator Privilege

is there any way to directly bind ChromeDriver with ChromiumWebBrowser , so there will be no need for cefclient.exe

also tried with RemoteWebDriver:

       try {
            var options = new ChromeOptions();
            options.BinaryLocation = @"C:\pathto\ClientBrowser.exe";
            options.AddArgument("--remote-debugging-port=1131");
            options.AddArgument("url=data:,");
            //options.AddArgument("--log-level=3");

            var service = ChromeDriverService.CreateDefaultService();
            //service.HideCommandPromptWindow = true;
            service.Port = 1131;
            service.Start();

            DesiredCapabilities capabilities = new DesiredCapabilities();
            capabilities.SetCapability(ChromeOptions.Capability, options);

            driver = new RemoteWebDriver(service.ServiceUrl, capabilities); //DesiredCapabilities.Chrome()

            //driver = new ChromeDriver(service,options); //chromedriver.exe

            driver.Navigate().GoToUrl("http://stackoverflow.com/");

        }

but RemoteWebDriver also didn't work for me, really stuck now, please

any help or suggestion would be a great help for me and for others too who wanted to do the same like me, Thanks in advance.

user_4071014 · Answer

I've just stumbled across this after spending many hours trying to achieve the same thing as the OP. I too was able to get Selenium working fine when testing against the cefclient.exe. However, our mock up CEF based application I was trying to test wouldn't play ball and Selenium would time out no matter what port I tried.

The solution turned out to be rather simple. It appears that when you launch the CEF embedded browser you can either pass in a URL string as an address or leave it blank. If you leave it blank, the page will be empty. This seems to cause Selenium to time out. If you add a URL though, Selenium connects fine and no port settings etc are required. Just the binary location switch. So my solution was as follows:

Within the CEF initialization code:

    _browser = new ChromiumWebBrowser("data:,")
    {
        Dock = DockStyle.Fill,
    };

Within the Selenium initialization code:

var options = new ChromeOptions { BinaryLocation = "PathToYourCef.exe" };

cefDriver = new ChromeDriver(options);

user_13571835 · Answer

I also encountered the same situation yesterday. After debugging, I found that the timeout after 60 seconds is because the window will be displayed after the program is fully executed. We need to use the ChromeDriver to drive the browser inside the window. We need to wait for the window All are loaded. My solution is to add a button to the program, bind the button with a click event, and load the driver in the click event. After the window loads, click the button to set the debug address and port.

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binding cefSharp client with Selenium Chrome Driver c#

3 Answers