Here is how to organize a message loop on a non-UI thread, to run asynchronous tasks like WebBrowser automation. It uses async/await to provide the convenient linear code flow and loads a set of web pages in a loop. The code is a ready-to-run console app which is partially based on this excellent post.
Related answers:
using System;
using System.Threading;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
using System.Windows.Forms;
namespace ConsoleApplicationWebBrowser
{
// by Noseratio - https://stackoverflow.com/users/1768303/noseratio
class Program
{
// Entry Point of the console app
static void Main(string[] args)
{
try
{
// download each page and dump the content
var task = MessageLoopWorker.Run(DoWorkAsync,
"http://www.example.com", "http://www.example.net", "http://www.example.org");
task.Wait();
Console.WriteLine("DoWorkAsync completed.");
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
Console.WriteLine("DoWorkAsync failed: " + ex.Message);
}
Console.WriteLine("Press Enter to exit.");
Console.ReadLine();
}
// navigate WebBrowser to the list of urls in a loop
static async Task<object> DoWorkAsync(object[] args)
{
Console.WriteLine("Start working.");
using (var wb = new WebBrowser())
{
wb.ScriptErrorsSuppressed = true;
TaskCompletionSource<bool> tcs = null;
WebBrowserDocumentCompletedEventHandler documentCompletedHandler = (s, e) =>
tcs.TrySetResult(true);
// navigate to each URL in the list
foreach (var url in args)
{
tcs = new TaskCompletionSource<bool>();
wb.DocumentCompleted += documentCompletedHandler;
try
{
wb.Navigate(url.ToString());
// await for DocumentCompleted
await tcs.Task;
}
finally
{
wb.DocumentCompleted -= documentCompletedHandler;
}
// the DOM is ready
Console.WriteLine(url.ToString());
Console.WriteLine(wb.Document.Body.OuterHtml);
}
}
Console.WriteLine("End working.");
return null;
}
}
// a helper class to start the message loop and execute an asynchronous task
public static class MessageLoopWorker
{
public static async Task<object> Run(Func<object[], Task<object>> worker, params object[] args)
{
var tcs = new TaskCompletionSource<object>();
var thread = new Thread(() =>
{
EventHandler idleHandler = null;
idleHandler = async (s, e) =>
{
// handle Application.Idle just once
Application.Idle -= idleHandler;
// return to the message loop
await Task.Yield();
// and continue asynchronously
// propogate the result or exception
try
{
var result = await worker(args);
tcs.SetResult(result);
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
tcs.SetException(ex);
}
// signal to exit the message loop
// Application.Run will exit at this point
Application.ExitThread();
};
// handle Application.Idle just once
// to make sure we're inside the message loop
// and SynchronizationContext has been correctly installed
Application.Idle += idleHandler;
Application.Run();
});
// set STA model for the new thread
thread.SetApartmentState(ApartmentState.STA);
// start the thread and await for the task
thread.Start();
try
{
return await tcs.Task;
}
finally
{
thread.Join();
}
}
}
}
