WebBrowser.DocumentText Property

Reference

Definition

Namespace:: System.Windows.Forms

Assembly:: System.Windows.Forms.dll

Important

Some information relates to prerelease product that may be substantially modified before it’s released. Microsoft makes no warranties, express or implied, with respect to the information provided here.

Gets or sets the HTML contents of the page displayed in the WebBrowser control.

public:
 property System::String ^ DocumentText { System::String ^ get(); void set(System::String ^ value); };

[System.ComponentModel.Browsable(false)]
public string DocumentText { get; set; }

[<System.ComponentModel.Browsable(false)>]
member this.DocumentText : string with get, set

Public Property DocumentText As String

Property Value

String

The HTML text of the displayed page, or the empty string ("") if no document is loaded.

Attributes: BrowsableAttribute

Exceptions

ObjectDisposedException

This WebBrowser instance is no longer valid.

InvalidOperationException

A reference to an implementation of the IWebBrowser2 interface could not be retrieved from the underlying ActiveX WebBrowser control.

Examples

The following code example demonstrates how to use the DocumentText property to programmatically display document content of your choosing. This example requires that your form contains a WebBrowser control called webBrowser1.

private void Form1_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    webBrowser1.DocumentText =
        "<html><body>Please enter your name:<br/>" +
        "<input type='text' name='userName'/><br/>" +
        "<a href='http://www.microsoft.com'>continue</a>" +
        "</body></html>";
    webBrowser1.Navigating += 
        new WebBrowserNavigatingEventHandler(webBrowser1_Navigating);
}

private void webBrowser1_Navigating(object sender, 
    WebBrowserNavigatingEventArgs e)
{
    System.Windows.Forms.HtmlDocument document =
        this.webBrowser1.Document;

    if (document != null && document.All["userName"] != null && 
        String.IsNullOrEmpty(
        document.All["userName"].GetAttribute("value")))
    {
        e.Cancel = true;
        System.Windows.Forms.MessageBox.Show(
            "You must enter your name before you can navigate to " +
            e.Url.ToString());
    }
}

Private Sub Form1_Load(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As EventArgs) _
    Handles Me.Load

    webBrowser1.DocumentText = _
        "<html><body>Please enter your name:<br/>" & _
        "<input type='text' name='userName'/><br/>" & _
        "<a href='http://www.microsoft.com'>continue</a>" & _
        "</body></html>"

End Sub

Private Sub webBrowser1_Navigating( _
    ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As WebBrowserNavigatingEventArgs) _
    Handles webBrowser1.Navigating

    Dim document As System.Windows.Forms.HtmlDocument = _
        webBrowser1.Document
    If document IsNot Nothing And _
        document.All("userName") IsNot Nothing And _
        String.IsNullOrEmpty( _
        document.All("userName").GetAttribute("value")) Then

        e.Cancel = True
        MsgBox("You must enter your name before you can navigate to " & _
            e.Url.ToString())
    End If

End Sub

Remarks

Use this property when you want to manipulate the contents of an HTML page displayed in the WebBrowser control using string processing tools. You can use this property, for example, to load pages from a database or to analyze pages using regular expressions. When you set this property, the WebBrowser control automatically navigates to the about:blank URL before loading the specified text. This means that the Navigating, Navigated, and DocumentCompleted events occur when you set this property, and the value of the Url property is no longer meaningful.

Note

This property contains the text of the current document, even if another document has been requested. If you set the value of this property and then immediately retrieve it again, the value retrieved may be different than the value set if the WebBrowser control has not had time to load the new content. You can retrieve the new value in a DocumentCompleted event handler. Alternatively, you can block the thread until the document is loaded by calling the Thread.Sleep method in a loop until the DocumentText property returns the value that you originally set it to.

To access the contents of a Web page as a Stream, use the DocumentStream property. You can also access the page contents using the HTML document object model (DOM) through the Document property.

Applies to