Selenium Webdriver and Embedded Browser in a Winform - How to connect web_driver instance? - selenium

Question

I need to connect/create an instance of Selenium Webdriver to web content that my application under test opens in a Winform.
My test framework opens the Winform application with CodedUI, and further test steps cause the Winform application to open another Winform window that has a browser embedded in it. I need to create or tie a Selenium instance to this embedded browser content. It's using WebViewer/Edge in the embedded area.
Note - Not yet ready to move to WinAppDriver, if ever.

Answer 1

Resolved this. I found out that the web pane is an object called a WebView2.
Automating inside it requires the application to be launched in a special way:
Dim AppPath As String = "[full path to your app and its name].exe"
Dim edgeOptions As New EdgeOptions
edgeOptions.UseChromium = True
edgeOptions.UseWebView = True
edgeOptions.DebuggerAddress = "localhost:9222"
Dim AppStartInfo = New ProcessStartInfo(AppPath)
AppStartInfo.UseShellExecute = False
AppStartInfo.EnvironmentVariables("WEBVIEW2_ADDITIONAL_BROWSER_ARGUMENTS") = "--remote-debugging-port=9222"
Diagnostics.Process.Start(AppStartInfo)
You also need:
Selenium Support and Selenium Webdriver version 4.0.0-rc3 installed in the projects
msedgedriver from here: https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/tools/webdriver/
And finally in your automation code, when the window with WebView2 in it finally appears, you need to run this code to tie selenium webdriver to the WebView2 pane:
Dim driver As String = "[path to:]msedgedriver.exe"
Dim edgeOptions As New EdgeOptions
edgeOptions.UseChromium = True
edgeOptions.UseWebView = True
edgeOptions.DebuggerAddress = "localhost:9222"
Dim WebDriver = New EdgeDriver(EdgeDriverService.CreateDefaultService(".", driver), edgeOptions)