Mod the Machine: February 2024

This does not have much to do with Inventor, it's simply about using a web browser component (CefSharp, WebView2 or something else) and send messages from the displayed website to the app.

I created a very basic sample to prove this works and used WebView2 just like my colleague for the Vault add-in sample.

Took the SimpleAddIn sample available in the Inventor SDK under "DeveloperTools\Samples\VCSharp.NET\AddIns\SimpleAddIn", added a Form to it that includes a WebView2 component.

using System.Windows.Forms;

namespace SimpleAddIn
{
    public partial class MyBrowserForm : Form
    {
        Inventor.Application _app;

        public MyBrowserForm(Inventor.Application app)
        {
            _app = app;

            // This seems to be needed
            string path = System.Environment.GetFolderPath(System.Environment.SpecialFolder.ApplicationData);
            System.Environment.SetEnvironmentVariable("WEBVIEW2_USER_DATA_FOLDER", path);

            InitializeComponent();

            myWebView2.WebMessageReceived += MyWebView2_WebMessageReceived;
            myWebView2.CoreWebView2InitializationCompleted += MyWebView2_CoreWebView2InitializationCompleted;
            myWebView2.EnsureCoreWebView2Async();
        }

        private void MyWebView2_CoreWebView2InitializationCompleted(object sender, Microsoft.Web.WebView2.Core.CoreWebView2InitializationCompletedEventArgs e)
        {
            var htmlContent = @"
<html>
<body>
<script>
function onClick() {
  window.chrome.webview.postMessage('Hello from web page');
}
</script>
<button onclick=""onClick()"">Hello</button>
</body>
</html>
            ";
            myWebView2.NavigateToString(htmlContent);
        }

        private void MyWebView2_WebMessageReceived(object sender, Microsoft.Web.WebView2.Core.CoreWebView2WebMessageReceivedEventArgs e)
        {
            var text = e.TryGetWebMessageAsString();
            var docName = _app.ActiveDocument.DisplayName;
            MessageBox.Show(text + " for " + docName);
        }
    }
}

Then show that Form when the "Draw Slot" button is clicked.

override protected void ButtonDefinition_OnExecute(NameValueMap context)
{
    var myBrowserForm = new MyBrowserForm(InventorApplication);
    myBrowserForm.Show();
}

When the user clicks the "Hello" button of the web page that will send a message back to the container.
The message can be caught using the WebMessageReceived event handler.

See it in action: