How to open and close a Firefox window in C# with a different instance of Firefox running?

Question

I have an application which lets the user open a customers profile in a web-based CRM and I need to make sure that the user cannot have two profiles open this way. I only need to do this for Firefox. I've managed to do this by simply running Firefox as a new System.Diagnostics.Process, keeping it in memory and closing when a new customer is being pulled up.

The problem is that it only works if I don't have another Firefox window opened at the same time. Since I can't disclose the CRM or customers I will be using Google and Bing instead. If I have a window opened this happens:

1. Open a Firefox window normally (via Windows).
2. Run the app and have it open Google in a new Firefox window - works OK.
3. Have the app open Bing - the browser process has now somehow ended (even though the browser window is still up) and I cannot close it - it will crash with a "Process has exited, so the requested information is not available." exception if I try to Close(). Process.HasExited also shows true.

If I open a new Firefox window normally after opening Google from the app, but before Bing it will close the new window instead.

I have managed to get around this using Selenium, but that feels like a very large stick to use on a small functionality (the Selenium DLL and driver weights more than the entire app).

I would be very grateful for any advice on how to make this work, or some alternative ways of achieving the same effect.

Here's my code:

    class MyClass
    {
        public static Process StartBrowser(Process proc, string url)
        {
            string AppPath = Environment.ExpandEnvironmentVariables(@"C:Program FilesMozilla Firefoxfirefox.exe");
            
            if (!File.Exists(AppPath)) 
                throw new ArgumentException(string.Format("some other exception message");

            if (proc != null && proc.HasExited)
            {
                Console.WriteLine("Process has exited");
            }
            else if (proc != null && !proc.HasExited)
            {
                proc.CloseMainWindow();
                proc.Close();
            }

            proc = new Process();
            proc.StartInfo = new ProcessStartInfo(AppPath, string.Format($"-foreground -new-window {url}"));
            proc.Start();

            return proc;
        }
    }

Here's how I call the above class in a test application:

public static void FirefoxTest()
{
    System.Diagnostics.Process proc = null;

    Console.WriteLine("Window 1");
    proc = MyClass.StartBrowser(proc, "http://www.google.com");
            
    Console.WriteLine("Press Enter for the second window...");
    Console.ReadLine();
            
    Console.WriteLine("Window 2");
    MyClass.StartBrowser(proc, "http://www.bing.com");
}

question from:https://stackoverflow.com/questions/65906289/how-to-open-and-close-a-firefox-window-in-c-sharp-with-a-different-instance-of-f

Answer 1

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