c# 4.0 - Get chrome browser title using c#

Question

Let's say I have multiple chrome windows open (not tabs),
how can I check the browser title?

I tried the following:

Process[] p = Process.GetProcessesByName("chrome");

foreach (Process item in p)
{
    Console.WriteLine(item.MainWindowTitle);
}

but it return me only the last open window name and all other are blanks..

Answer 1

I had to do something like this, but it was amazingly fiddly involving calling Windows API functions. The problem was that Chrome seems to use a single process for multiple windows or some other weirdness that meant the simple approach didn't work for me.

Anyway, try this and see if it works. Basically it uses the Chrome window class name (which might be Chrome_WidgetWin_0 or Chrome_WidgetWin_1) to enumerate all windows with that class name, and returns the window titles for those which are not blank.

Note that this also always returns a windows title called "Chrome App Launcher" for some reason, so you might need to filter that out.

Note: you can also do this for Firefox by using "MozillaWindowClass" and for IE by using "IEFrame" (although any of those are likely to change with different versions).

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Diagnostics.CodeAnalysis;
using System.Runtime.InteropServices;
using System.Security;
using System.Text;

namespace Demo
{
    class WindowsByClassFinder
    {
        public delegate bool EnumWindowsDelegate(IntPtr hWnd, IntPtr lparam);

        [SuppressMessage("Microsoft.Security", "CA2118:ReviewSuppressUnmanagedCodeSecurityUsage"), SuppressUnmanagedCodeSecurity]
        [DllImport("user32.dll", SetLastError = true, CharSet = CharSet.Auto)]
        public static extern int GetClassName(IntPtr hWnd, StringBuilder lpClassName, int nMaxCount);

        [SuppressMessage("Microsoft.Security", "CA2118:ReviewSuppressUnmanagedCodeSecurityUsage"), SuppressUnmanagedCodeSecurity]
        [DllImport("user32.dll")]
        [return: MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.Bool)]
        public extern static bool EnumWindows(EnumWindowsDelegate lpEnumFunc, IntPtr lparam);

        [SuppressMessage("Microsoft.Security", "CA2118:ReviewSuppressUnmanagedCodeSecurityUsage"), SuppressUnmanagedCodeSecurity]
        [DllImport("User32", CharSet=CharSet.Auto, SetLastError=true)]
        public static extern int GetWindowText(IntPtr windowHandle, StringBuilder stringBuilder, int nMaxCount);

        [DllImport("user32.dll", EntryPoint = "GetWindowTextLength", SetLastError = true)]
        internal static extern int GetWindowTextLength(IntPtr hwnd);


        /// <summary>Find the windows matching the specified class name.</summary>

        public static IEnumerable<IntPtr> WindowsMatching(string className)
        {
            return new WindowsByClassFinder(className)._result;
        }

        private WindowsByClassFinder(string className)
        {
            _className = className;
            EnumWindows(callback, IntPtr.Zero);
        }

        private bool callback(IntPtr hWnd, IntPtr lparam)
        {
            if (GetClassName(hWnd, _apiResult, _apiResult.Capacity) != 0)
            {
                if (string.CompareOrdinal(_apiResult.ToString(), _className) == 0)
                {
                    _result.Add(hWnd);
                }
            }

            return true; // Keep enumerating.
        }

        public static IEnumerable<string> WindowTitlesForClass(string className)
        {
            foreach (var windowHandle in WindowsMatchingClassName(className))
            {
                int length = GetWindowTextLength(windowHandle);
                StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder(length + 1);
                GetWindowText(windowHandle, sb, sb.Capacity);
                yield return sb.ToString();
            }
        }

        public static IEnumerable<IntPtr> WindowsMatchingClassName(string className)
        {
            if (string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(className))
                throw new ArgumentOutOfRangeException("className", className, "className can't be null or blank.");

            return WindowsMatching(className);
        }

        private readonly string _className;
        private readonly List<IntPtr> _result = new List<IntPtr>();
        private readonly StringBuilder _apiResult = new StringBuilder(1024);
    }

    class Program
    {
        void run()
        {
            ChromeWindowTitles().Print();
        }

        public IEnumerable<string> ChromeWindowTitles()
        {
            foreach (var title in WindowsByClassFinder.WindowTitlesForClass("Chrome_WidgetWin_0"))
                if (!string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(title))
                    yield return title;

            foreach (var title in WindowsByClassFinder.WindowTitlesForClass("Chrome_WidgetWin_1"))
                if (!string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(title))
                    yield return title;
        }

        static void Main()
        {
            new Program().run();
        }
    }

    static class DemoUtil
    {
        public static void Print(this object self)
        {
            Console.WriteLine(self);
        }

        public static void Print(this string self)
        {
            Console.WriteLine(self);
        }

        public static void Print<T>(this IEnumerable<T> self)
        {
            foreach (var item in self)
                Console.WriteLine(item);
        }
    }
}