How do I use WebView2 in a console application

Question

string text = "return 'test';";
var webView = new Microsoft.Web.WebView2.WinForms.WebView2();
webView.EnsureCoreWebView2Async(null).RunSynchronously();
var srun = webView.CoreWebView2.ExecuteScriptAsync(text);

When I run the above code EnsureCoreWebView2Async is getting this exception

"Cannot change thread mode after it is set. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80010106 (RPC_E_CHANGED_MODE))"

What do I need to do to run this with out a winform dlg in a console or windows service?

Answer 1

It turns out the key thing is to add [STAThread] to the Main function.

class Program
{
    [STAThread]
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        Application.EnableVisualStyles();
        Microsoft.Web.WebView2.WinForms.WebView2 webView21 = new Microsoft.Web.WebView2.WinForms.WebView2();

        var ecwTask = webView21.EnsureCoreWebView2Async(null);
        while (ecwTask.IsCompleted == false)
        {
            Application.DoEvents();
        };

        var scriptText = @"var test = function(){ return 'apple';}; test();";
        var srunTask = webView21.ExecuteScriptAsync(scriptText);
        while (srunTask.IsCompleted == false)
        {
            Application.DoEvents();
        };

        Console.WriteLine(srunTask.Result);
    }
}

Other items that maybe note worthy,

• Sometimes you need to set the bitness of the application because use of AnyCPU will cause an infinite wait when creating the WebView2 COM object.
• You may need to set the webview2 source property to foce the instance into existance.