DotNetBrowser.Win-x64 4.3.1

DotNetBrowser

DotNetBrowser is a .NET library for embedding a Chromium-based web browser into .NET applications. It renders web pages built with HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript and gives you programmatic access to the browser, the DOM, the network, and more.

DotNetBrowser is a commercial product. To use it, you need a license key. A free 30-day evaluation license is available through the evaluation form.

The current release uses Chromium 153.0.8010.37. See the release notes for the changes in each version.

Installation

For a desktop application, install the package for your UI framework. It fetches the engine and the Chromium binaries for you, so one package is enough:

For a console or headless application without a UI framework, install one engine package instead:

See the NuGet installation guide for the full list of packages, including the x86, x64, and ARM64 variants of the UI packages.

You can also create a ready-to-run project from a template:

dotnet new install DotNetBrowser.Templates
dotnet new dotnetbrowser.wpf.app -o Example.Wpf

The templates are dotnetbrowser.wpf.app, dotnetbrowser.winforms.app, dotnetbrowser.winui.app, dotnetbrowser.avalonia.app, dotnetbrowser.avalonia12.app, dotnetbrowser.blazor.avalonia.app, and dotnetbrowser.console.app. The WPF, Windows Forms, Avalonia UI, and console templates also come in VB.NET: add -lang VisualBasic to the command.

Requirements

DotNetBrowser runs on .NET Framework 4.6.2 to 4.8.1 and on .NET 5 to 10. It supports Windows on x86, x64, and ARM64, plus Linux and macOS on x64 and ARM64. The system requirements page lists the supported OS versions.

Features

Chromium integration

DotNetBrowser exposes the Chromium features you would otherwise reach only through a browser UI:

• DOM API: access the Document Object Model of the loaded web page, find elements, interact with them, and handle and dispatch DOM events for particular nodes.
• JavaScript bridge: execute JavaScript on the web page and process the results, or inject a .NET object into the page and call it from JavaScript.
• Printing: initiate and configure printing programmatically, including printing to PDF.
• Network: intercept, redirect, handle, and suppress network requests, override HTTP headers and POST data, filter cookies, and change proxy settings on the fly.

The examples repository shows these and other features in working C# and VB.NET projects.

Deployment

The Chromium binaries ship inside the DotNetBrowser.Chromium.* packages and are extracted automatically at run time. You do not need to install Chromium, Google Chrome, or any other browser runtime on the target machine. DotNetBrowser also supports trimming and Native AOT.

Headless mode

DotNetBrowser works in Windows services, server applications, and Linux environments without a desktop session. A web page is loaded and rendered in memory, and you can then take a screenshot of it. See the headless Linux guide for the required setup.

User input simulation

You can simulate mouse and keyboard input and interact with a web page the same way a user does.

UI controls

DotNetBrowser provides the BrowserView control for WPF, Windows Forms, WinUI 3, and Avalonia UI. You can also embed DotNetBrowser into VSTO add-ins.

Usage

The example below creates an IEngine, loads a web page, reads two elements from its DOM, and disposes the engine. It needs only the engine package, so it works the same way on every supported platform. Replace <LICENSE_KEY> with your license key. The license guide describes other ways to provide the key, such as an embedded dotnetbrowser.license file.

using System;
using DotNetBrowser.Browser;
using DotNetBrowser.Dom;
using DotNetBrowser.Engine;

EngineOptions.Builder builder = new EngineOptions.Builder();
builder.LicenseKey = "<LICENSE_KEY>";

using (IEngine engine = EngineFactory.Create(builder.Build()))
{
    IBrowser browser = engine.CreateBrowser();
    browser.Navigation
        .LoadUrl("https://quotes.toscrape.com/random").Wait();

    IDocument document = browser.MainFrame.Document;
    string quote = document.GetElementByClassName("text")?.InnerText;
    string author = document.GetElementByClassName("author")?.InnerText;

    Console.WriteLine(quote);
    Console.WriteLine($"— {author}");
}

In a desktop application, the engine and the browser are created the same way. The BrowserView control of your UI framework then displays the browser. Each quick start below shows the complete window, and the matching template creates a project with that code: