Internet Explorer automation/Watin: catching navigation error codes

vidarkongsli — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 12:20:02 +0000

One question have troubled me for some time when automating Internet Explorer (actually, I am doing web testing with Watin): how to test for HTTP status codes. Finally, I figured out how to do this. The lies in an event that the InternetExplorer object raises when navigation is unsuccessful.

I ended up with writing a C# helper class:

using System.Net;

using WatiN.Core;

using SHDocVw;

using Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.UnitTesting;

using System.Globalization;

namespace Test

    public class NavigationObserver

        private HttpStatusCode _statusCode;

        public NavigationObserver(IE ie)

            InternetExplorer internetExplorer = (InternetExplorer)ie.InternetExplorer;

            internetExplorer.NavigateError += new DWebBrowserEvents2_NavigateErrorEventHandler(IeNavigateError);

        public void ShouldHave(HttpStatusCode expectedStatusCode)

            if (!_statusCode.Equals(expectedStatusCode))

                Assert.Fail(string.Format(CultureInfo.InvariantCulture, "Wrong status code. Expected {0}, but was {1}",

                    expectedStatusCode, _statusCode));

        private void IeNavigateError(object pDisp, ref object URL, ref object Frame, ref object StatusCode, ref bool Cancel)

            _statusCode = (HttpStatusCode)StatusCode;

Note that I use Visual Studio test runner to run my web tests. Then, I can use this in my test:

using (IE ie = new IE())

    NavigationObserver observer = new NavigationObserver(ie);

    ie.GoTo("http://some.where.com");

    observer.ShouldHave(HttpStatusCode.NotFound);

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Internet Explorer automation/Watin: catching navigation error codes