How do i do this? (Possibly Windows Messaging related)

Mutant_Fruit

Basically, i have an app which i want to be able to open a webpage in the OS's default browser. If i was to do this by hand, what i'd do is click on start>Run. and i'd type in www.boards.ie and click ok. That would make windows open boards.ie in the default browser.

How can i do this via code? Is "windows messaging" (or whatever its called) what i'm supposed to use to do this? Or is there something else? Any method that works is fine by me.

I'm coding in C#, and its a windows application.

Hobbes

You would shell out to the system the URL. The system should do the rest.

Mutant_Fruit

Thats what i'm looking into, i know its possible, i just don't know what command i should be looking for in order to send the URL to the system and let the system take over. I'll keep browsing, i'm sure i'll find it eventually. I'll probably end up experimenting with the Process class and see if i can make something work from that.

Evil Phil

Easy peasy, Process and ProcessStartInfo are what your looking for, they're in System.Diagnostics.

Here's a basic method I flung together, there's loads of other cool and funky things you can do though:

private void LaunchBrowser(string uri)
{
	try
	{
		ProcessStartInfo psi = new ProcessStartInfo();
		psi.FileName = uri;
		Process.Start(psi);
		
	}
	catch(Exception ex)
	{
		MessageBox.Show(ex.ToString());
	}
}

Ah, I see you've found it already.

Hobbes

normally something like Shell() or Exec()

oq4v3ht0u76kf2

Pardon my ignorance, but would a desktop shortcut not achieve the same effect?

Evil Phil

Not if your trying to launch it programatically no.

Capt'n Midnight

For most versions of windows at the command prompt/in a batch file you would type

Start http://www.boards.ie

so you could figure out how to shell out to dos or call a batch file

Evil Phil

You could shell it out to dos or cmd but it would require the use of the Win32 API which means writing unmanaged/unsafe code. The .Net framework accounts for most API calls, outside of the really obscure things, and using Process and ProcessStartInfo is the .Net way to do this. Not the only way I'm sure but does seem to be the .Net *replacement* for ShellExec().

Mutant_Fruit

Excellante! I wasn't sure if i could use the Process class in that way (and i didn't have time to do extensive googling on it) but i was planning on trying something similar. I was thinking of writing a .url file, then executing it with a Process and then deleting the .url file as opposed to directly executing a url. (if you know what i mean).

Directly executing the url is by far the better way. Thanks.

Pardon my ignorance, but would a desktop shortcut not achieve the same effect?

It would achieve exactly the same affect. But imagine the annoyance of a user when they click on a (dynamic) link in my program, and instead of a webpage opening, a dialog opens and tells them to click on a freshly created shortcut that i put on their desktop :P

daymobrew

I don't know C# but here is the answer in C:

ShellExecute(NULL, "open", "http://www.boards.ie", NULL, NULL, SW_SHOWNORMAL);

See ShellExecute at msdn.microsoft.com for more information about the NULL parameters.