Automating Edge Browser with Selenium

Using Selenium for Browser Automation

You can import a ready-made example from here: https://eu.eyeauras.net/share/S20240829142432YXyi4jtEdmlm

Why?

Searching for images and simulating user input is useful when working with games or unstructured data. If the task involves automating something in a browser, I highly recommend looking into using Selenium and MS Edge. This combination, proven by time and the entire industry, allows you to work with web pages and gives you full control over what happens there. Essentially, Selenium solves the same problems as the eye, but exclusively for browsers.
A huge advantage of this type of automation is that you can manage multiple windows simultaneously without any issues of input overlap or incorrect detections - browsers are completely isolated from each other.

What's Happening Here

The code below performs several actions:

Checks that you have all the necessary components to run this automation. If not, it downloads them and places them in a nearby folder.
Launches the browser. As an example, a full-fledged browser with a user interface is launched.
Opens the Bing search engine page.
Enters text.
Presses Submit.
Completes the script and closes the browser.

How to Customize This

A comprehensive description of working with Selenium cannot fit even in one book, let alone a small article. There is plenty of information on the internet, and ChatGPT is also well-versed in it, so go ahead :)

Code Example (current version available at the link above)

#r "nuget: Selenium.WebDriver, 4.24.0"
#r "nuget: WebDriverManager, 2.17.4"
#r "nuget: SharpZipLib, 1.4.2"
#r "nuget: AngleSharp, 1.1.2"

using OpenQA.Selenium;
using OpenQA.Selenium.Edge;

// Initialize the Edge WebDriver
using (var driver = InitializeSeleniumDriver())
{
    // Navigate to Google
    driver.Navigate().GoToUrl("https://www.bing.com");

    Sleep(5000);

    // Find the search box using its name attribute
    IWebElement searchBox = driver.FindElement(By.Name("q"));

    // Type the search query into the search box
    searchBox.SendKeys("Selenium C# example");

    // Submit the form
    searchBox.Submit();

    // Wait for a few seconds to see the results
    Sleep(5000);
}

private EdgeDriver InitializeSeleniumDriver(){
    Log.Info("Ensuring that we have webdriver installed");
    var driverPath = new WebDriverManager.DriverManager()
        .SetUpDriver(new WebDriverManager.DriverConfigs.Impl.EdgeConfig());

    Log.Info($"Initializing webdriver session using driver @ {driverPath}");

    // Set up the Edge WebDriver options
    var options = new EdgeOptions(){
    LeaveBrowserRunning = true    
    };

    var service = EdgeDriverService.CreateDefaultService(
        driverPath: Path.GetDirectoryName(driverPath),
        driverExecutableFileName: Path.GetFileName(driverPath)
    );
    service.UseVerboseLogging = true;
    return new EdgeDriver(service, options);
}