can not use watin

Question

I run a very simple watin console application like below

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using WatiN.Core;

namespace ConsoleApplication2
{
    class Program
    {
        [STAThread]
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            IE ie = new IE();

            // point it to http://www.google.com

            ie.GoTo("http://www.google.com");

            // fill the search box

            ie.TextField(Find.ByName("q")).TypeText("WatiN");

            // performs click event

            ie.Button(Find.ByValue("Google Search")).Click();
        }
    }
}

Which is not working. A pop up said that there's a missing .exe file. I can not understand because it's just a console application. Why do I need the .exe file?

Answer 1

If you are trying to use WatiN for web application testing through Internet Explorer, ensure to complete the right configurations first.

NUnit doesn't run tests in a thread using the STA apartment state; it uses multithreaded apartment (MTA), but this isn't a big problem, you can attach config file to the NUnit test project and specify the apartment state mode that you want this way:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<configuration>
    <configSections>
        <sectionGroup name="NUnit">
            <section name="TestRunner" type="System.Configuration.NameValueSectionHandler"/>
        </sectionGroup>
    </configSections>
    <NUnit>
        <TestRunner>
            <!-- Valid values are STA, MTA. Others ignored. -->
            <add key="ApartmentState" value="STA" />
        </TestRunner>
    </NUnit>
</configuration>

Article Reference:

WatiN, Internet Explorer and Thread.Apartmentstate

This article explains the why and how about setting the ApartmentState of a Thread to single treaded apartment (STA). This is required when running your test with Internet Explorer. It also shows you how to do this when using WatiN with NUnit, MBUnit, MSTest, TestDriven.Net, Fitnesse or SharpDevelop.