CefSharp based Blazor hybrid

[jpmikkers]

Hi,

I managed to create a CefSharp based WinForms component that enables building Blazor hybrid apps using CefSharp as the underlying webview. I'm wondering if people here see a use case for this?

For those interested, the code is here https://github.com/jpmikkers/Baksteen.Blazor.CefSharp

Update: moved from https://github.com/jpmikkers/Baksteen.Avalonia.Blazor/blob/wip/Baksteen.Blazor.CefSharpWinForms/BlazorCefWebView.cs

[amaitland]

I managed to create a CefSharp based WinForms component that enables building Blazor hybrid apps using CefSharp as the underlying webview

Nice one! Thanks for sharing. Always interesting to see how people are using CefSharp 👍

https://github.com/jpmikkers/Baksteen.Avalonia.Blazor/blob/wip/Baksteen.Blazor.CefSharpWinForms/CefCoreWebView2Adapter.cs#L68

As a passing comment if you use an instance of EventTarget you'd get built in add/remove/dispatch functionality.

[jpmikkers]

@amaitland thanks for the tip, works great and it's much cleaner.

[joriverm]

Hey @jpmikkers ,

me and my dev team are currently struggling with this, as the known Airspace issue with WPF is also there for blazorwebview (as it is webview2 based...).
since we are using libcef to do our webview stuff we were wondering if we could use that libcef based webview outside of Avalonia, as this isn't what we are working with (WPF).

i think a CefSharp implementation of the blazor webview would be really beneficial tbh

[amaitland]

i think it could be very beneficial if we made this into a package for others to use
something like :

If you are suggesting Nuget package names then you'd need to include Blazor in the name to clearly communicate their intended purpose. As an example CefSharp.Webview.Abstraction doesn't tell me what it's for. The name is way too generic, you'll only create confusion.

Reminds me I need to finish the process of reserving the CefSharp prefix on Nuget.org.

those packages could then be used by applications to use the BlazorWebview :)
i will be using this stuff for my client, but imo it would be awesome if this was a public thing :)

I'd start with a public repo first and see what sort of community interest you get. Live with the project for a while, ideally use it in multiple projects so you have a better sense of different use cases. Then review/refine your public API.

Publishing/maintaining Nuget packages can be a lot of work, make sure you are prepared to the time commitment.

[joriverm]

@jpmikkers : i created a solution based on your WIP, and that uses CefSharp as a basis for the webview. it all works, except for the avalonia demo, which is showing a black screen.
from what i gather, avalonia doesn't like the CefSharp winforms control, as i can reproduce it by using a ChromiumBrowser in the avalonia webview instead of a normal webview2 from microsoft. got an idea?

here is the zip :
CefSharp.BlazorWebview.zip

as to what you said @amaitland :
i agree that managing a nuget package takes time and effort. I manage a few nuget packages in my free time and they do take time.
I also agree to what you said in the name being too abstract. I changed this to CefSharp.BlazorWebview.* instead of CefSharp.Webview.*
the abstraction is inline with other packages, like in aspcore, that have a base package that is pure for implementations. things like Microsoft.Extensions.DependencyInjection.Abstractions or something :)

so far this looks like a perfect copy of the MS' BlazorWebView and i don't think it would need much changes except for some package changes, but yes, we could maybe first get a repo going and then see :)

[jpmikkers]

The new repo is here:
https://github.com/jpmikkers/Baksteen.Blazor.CefSharp

I got rid of the avalonia project, because my original repo covers that.

[joriverm]

@jpmikkers : i just noticed a bug in the code. it seems the blazor website can not be interacted with. or thats what it looks like, but in the console log it looks like it does work and clicking links (even if page isn't rendered). seems the UI bit is broken.
got an idea? im currently looking at the dispatcher...

[jpmikkers]

@joriverm I've opened a discussions on the repo jpmikkers/Baksteen.Blazor.CefSharp#1 , lets continue there.