"Visited Links" can't be removed in the running App

[hhu-mahmoud]

Bug Report

• What version of the product are you using?
  Version: 108.4.130

• What architecture x86 or x64?
  x64

• What version of .Net?
  .Net 7.0

• On what operating system?
  Win10

• Are you using WinForms, WPF or OffScreen?
  WPF

• What steps will reproduce the problem?

Remove "Cache" folder, while the system is Running and after Cef Shutdown, Browser Close and Disapose.
If I tried to remove the "Cache" folder while the system is running and after I shutdown the Cef and Close all open browsers and disapose them, then I get a exception, that only the file "Visited Links" is still open by another process. I could delete the file only if the App is totally/complete closed.

• What is the expected output? What do you see instead?

I need to delete the "Cache" folder and its content also "Visited Links" by closing the App. Everything would be delete unless the file "Visited Links". Do you have an solution for this problem or any ideas?

[amaitland]

Converted to discussion. Visited Links is entirely implemented at the Chromium layer, it's not something that CefSharp has direct control over.

There's a related discussion at https://www.magpcss.org/ceforum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=18686

I need to delete the "Cache" folder and its content

What do you need to delete the cache for? You can use an InMemory cache if you don't want to persist data to disk.

You can also clear the browser cache and cookies at runtime via CDP if required.

[hhu-mahmoud]

@amaitland

The user can the deactivate and activate the cache in the program. If the user clicks on cache deactivate, then should the stop tracking the data in cache and by closing the app should the cache folder removed.

• By closing the program:

if (Cef.IsInitialized) { Cef.ShutdownWithoutChecks(); }

and also i check in browser object is exist, then i disapose it.

I use also this command to remove the cache path, if the user has deactivated the cache:

RequestContext.Configure().WithCachePath("").Create();

after that i delete the cache folder from AppData/Romaing:

// TODO: Visited links can not be removed while the system running!!
 if (!DeactivateBrowserCaching || !Directory.Exists(_cacheDir))
    {
      return;
     }
// delete the cache folder if exists after the browser shutdown
Directory.Delete(_cacheDir, true);

I don't need any cache folder in AppData/Romaing if the user don't want to use the cache!!

In this link, the solution is to build a helper service to clean everything after the app totally closed. I don't want to build a cleanup service for just this file "Visited Links" and i don't understand, why it still open at all and how may i close it?!

[amaitland]

if (Cef.IsInitialized) { Cef.ShutdownWithoutChecks(); }

Cef.Shutdown should be used instead. If you changed to using ShutdownWithoutChecks because you were getting an exception then you are calling Shutdown on the incorrect thread and that's possibly part of your problem.

You can also try enabling Cef.EnableWaitForBrowsersToClose() and calling Cef.WaitForBrowsersToClose(); before Cef.Shutdown() is called.

See #3047 (comment)

and i don't understand, why it still open at all and how may i close it?!

You would need to debug Chromium to determine the reason it's still open. As I've already said CefSharp has no direct control over this behaviour.

In this link, the solution is to build a helper service to clean everything after the app totally closed

You don't need anything fancy, just spawn your app with a command line arg that tells it to cleanup, wait for your main application to exit then delete the folder. You don't need a service.

[hhu-mahmoud]

Problem solved by deleting the cache folder after closing the app.