How to use Selenium with C# in Visual Studio Code?

Step 1: Create a New Project

Open a terminal window in Visual Studio Code.

Navigate to the folder where you want to create your new project.

Type dotnet new console -n MySeleniumProject to create a new console application.

Step 2: Add Selenium WebDriver NuGet Package

Navigate into your project folder in the terminal (cd MySeleniumProject).

Type dotnet add package Selenium.WebDriver --version 3.141.0 to add the Selenium WebDriver package to your project.

Step 3: Add WebDriver Manager (Optional)

For ease of management, you can also add WebDriver Manager which will automatically manage the browser driver for you.

bash

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dotnet add package WebDriverManager --version 2.11.0

Step 4: Add Selenium Code

Open your Program.cs file and add the necessary using statements and Selenium code. Below is a sample code to open Google and search for "Hello World":

csharp

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using System;

using OpenQA.Selenium;

using OpenQA.Selenium.Chrome;

using WebDriverManager;

using WebDriverManager.DriverConfigs.Impl;

namespace MySeleniumProject

{

    class Program

    {

        static void Main(string[] args)

        {

            // Setup ChromeDriver using WebDriverManager

            new DriverManager().SetUpDriver(new ChromeConfig());

            // Initialize Chrome Driver

            IWebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver();

            // Navigate to Google

            driver.Navigate().GoToUrl("https://www.google.com");

            // Find search box using its name attribute

            IWebElement searchBox = driver.FindElement(By.Name("q"));

            // Type "Hello World" in the search box

            searchBox.SendKeys("Hello World");

            // Submit the search

            searchBox.Submit();

            // Wait for a bit (this is not the best practice, but serves for demonstration purposes)

            System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(5000);

            // Close the Chrome browser

            driver.Quit();

        }

    }

}

Step 5: Run Your Code

Go back to the terminal and navigate to your project directory. Run the command dotnet run to execute your program. This should open up a new Chrome window and perform a Google search for "Hello World".

And there you have it! You've set up a Selenium WebDriver project in C# using Visual Studio Code.