About Support for Chromium Embedded Framework

About Automated Testing of CEF-Based Applications

Requirements

Exposing CEF-Based Applications

Specifics of Testing CEF-Based Applications

Known Issues and Limitations

With TestComplete, you can test web pages in applications that use the Chromium Embedded Framework. TestComplete supports CEF3 versions of the framework. You can test 32-bit and 64-bit applications created with the following programming languages and frameworks:

Currently, the supported versions of CEF3 builds are 85.0.4183 and earlier (except CEF3 1750).

Note: For CEF applications that use WPF controls, only versions 84.0.04147 and earlier are supported.

If you use NuGet or some other package manager to add CEF libraries to your application, make sure that the version of the CEF build within the package conforms to the version of CEF builds supported by TestComplete.

Also, TestComplete supports some specific types of CEF-based applications:

• CEF applications launched by using the ClickOnce technology (the required TestComplete licenses for such applications are the same as for usual CEF applications)
• CEF applications that do not implement cef_loader_hander_t
• CEF applications that do not implement cef_life_span_handler
• CEF applications with browser configuration disabled (settings.command_line_args_disabled = 1)

Add your CEF-based application to the Tested Applications collection as a generic Windows application. See Adding Tested Applications. In this case, TestComplete will try to expose the application automatically (see below).

If your CEF application is launched by using the ClickOnce technology, add the application to the Tested Applications collection as a ClickOnce application and select the Allow TestComplete to interact with embedded Chromium content check box. See Preparing CEF-Based Applications for Testing.

• An active license for the TestComplete Web Module.

  Testing of CEF applications embedded in WPF applications requires active licenses for both Desktop and Web modules.

• The following plugins must be enabled in TestComplete:

  • Web Testing

  • Chromium Embedded Framework Support

  Note:

  These plugins are installed and enabled automatically as part of the TestComplete Web module. You can check if these plugins are active in File | Install Extensions.

There are two ways to gain access to web pages and elements of CEF-based applications: automatic (recommended) and manual.

After the application is exposed (either automatically or manually), TestComplete will be able to access web pages and elements in the application’s embedded Chromium browser. You can test these web pages as you normally do this in a regular browser.

Web testing in embedded browsers, like CEF-based applications, differs from testing in regular web browsers. The main difference is that TestComplete identifies CEF-based applications as Process test objects rather than Browser test objects. Also, Page objects are nested under the browser hosted window, they are not direct child objects of the application’s process.

To get a Page object for an embedded web page, you can use the following code:

def Test():
  # Search for the Page object
  p = Sys.Process("cefclient1");
  page = p.FindChild("ObjectType", "Page", 5);

  if page.Exists:
    # Work with the Page object
    page.ToUrl("www.example.com");
  else:
    Log.Error("The Page object was not found.");

For more differences between regular and embedded browsers, see the Specifics of Web Testing in Embedded Browsers section in the Considerations for Web Testing topic.

• .NET applications created with CefGlue are not supported.

• Windowless (offscreen) rendering mode is supported only for WPF controls of CefSharp applications. Other applications that use offscreeen rendering are not supported.

• If script injection is restricted by the Content Security Policy (CSP) in your tested CEF application, TestComplete will not be able to access internal objects of the application.

  To be able to create tests for such applications, you need to disable the policy that restricts script injection. To do that, remove the Content-Security-Policy header from your application pages.

  Create a separate test build of your application with the policy disabled, for testing purpose only. Do not deploy your application with the policy disabled, as it may impair your application security.

  You can find more information about CSP and on how to work with it at:

  developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/CSP

• If due to security settings enforced in your tested CEF application it behaves incorrectly when launched from TestComplete, you may want to try launching your application with the -notOverwriteWebSecurity parameter. Specify the parameter in the Command-line parameters text box of the appropriate TestedApps item in your TestComplete project.

• TestComplete cannot perform ClickItem actions on ListBox controls in applications based on CEF3 builds 1650 and 1750. This behavior is caused by an issue in the Chromium engine and was fixed in CEF build 1916. As a workaround, you can select items of ListBox controls by calling the Keys action:

  aListBox.Keys("[Down][Down]") // Select the second item in the list
  aListBox.Keys("myItem") // Input the desired value
  

• If you face issues when accessing GUI objects in your CEF application, make sure the LifespanHandler and LoadHandler interfaces are implemented in your application.

• Running cross-platform web tests for CEF applications in remote environments is not supported.