What do I need to do to use the System.Windows.Forms.WebBrowser control in the WCF service?

Question

I believe the WebBrowser control is an STA, and the WCF service hosted in the NT service is an MTA? Thank.

Answer 1

That's right, this is unlikely to work. The WebBrowser control was intended to be used by a single STA thread. It will not display well in the MTA in the web service and will most likely require a serious hacker.

What are you trying to do? If you can describe your problem, we can offer an alternative solution.

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change

Well, maybe it's possible, although of course it's hacked. Here's a theoretical implementation:

• STA, , - .
• STA.
• -. .
• -.

:

public Bitmap GiveMeScreenshot()
{
    var waiter = new ManualResetEvent();
    Bitmap screenshot = null;

    // Spin up an STA thread to do the web browser work:
    var staThread = new Thread(() =>
    {
        var browser = new WebBrowser();
        browser.DocumentCompleted += (sender, e) => 
        {
            screenshot = TakeScreenshotOfLoadedWebpage(browser);
            waiter.Set(); // Signal the web service thread we're done.
        }
        browser.Navigate("http://www.google.com");
    };
    staThread.SetApartmentState(ApartmentState.STA);
    staThread.Start();

    var timeout = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(30);
    waiter.WaitOne(timeout); // Wait for the STA thread to finish.
    return screenshot;
};

private Bitmap TakeScreenshotOfLoadedWebpage(WebBrowser browser)
{
    // TakeScreenshot() doesn't exist. But you can do this using the DrawToDC method:
    // http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa752273(VS.85).aspx
    return browser.TakeScreenshot(); 
}

, : , System.Windows.Forms.WebBrowser , , . . . !