C# test automation with Internet Explorer

As a follow up on my previous post, I had the idea you can do the same in managed code (in your test library, for instance). Although this won't exactly be a unit test (especialy with the example search form, it's more integration testing), it can be usefull in some scenarios.

You need a reference to two COM dll's,

MSHTML

Microsoft HTML Object Library

SHDocVw

Microsoft Internet Controls

After that, you can use the following example code inside your test (I present it here as one block. Some things can be put in test setup and teardown):

SHDocVw.InternetExplorer ie = new SHDocVw.InternetExplorerClass();
object missing = new object();
ie.Navigate("http://localhost/Default.aspx", ref missing, ref missing, ref missing, ref missing);
ie.Visible = true;
while (ie.Busy)
{
System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(500);
}
mshtml.HTMLDocumentClass doc = ie.Document as mshtml.HTMLDocumentClass;
doc.getElementById("searchbox").setAttribute("value", "test", 0);
doc.getElementById("searchsubmit").click();
while (ie.Busy)
{
System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(500);
}
string bodytext = doc.body.innerHTML;
Debug.Assert( bodytext.IndexOf("documents found")>0);

ie.Quit();


PowerShell Web UI test automation

Just read an article in MSDN magazine about test automation for Internet Explorer so you can test your web user interface. There are other tools for this (like Selenium), but those need quite a setup.

Execute a search-box test in PowerShell:

$ie = new-object -com "InternetExplorer.Application"
$ie.navigate("http://localhost/Default.aspx")
$ie.visible = $true
$doc = $ie.document
$doc.getElementByID("searchbox").value = "test"
$doc.getElementByID("searchsubmit").click()