[02/03] Interacting with MS IE URL Bar

[r1chyb]

Hi, i have tryed to look through the forums for the answer to my question but im not to sure what im meant to be looking for.. I have found a link to a tutorial but its in vb6 and the control doesnt work in vb.net 2003.

Ok so this is what im looking to do, what i want to do is create a form that a user inputs 2 peices of data e.g. First name and Second name then from there they press a button and it gets put into a preset URL e.g. if i want to use google search option i would put in the form my search term Fishing in one box and world in the second box so when the user clicks the continue button it will open up a browser with this
"http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=fishing+world&meta="

in the url bar

Can anyone help me or point me in the correct direction.

[cameron2]

I'm not quite sure what you are trying to do but if you are trying to have you prpgram access the webrowser and doing stuff with it you might want to take a look at the Findwindow, Findwindowex and Sendmessage API.

[r1chyb]

sorry if i wasnt very clear if you look below i will have a form which will define variable1 and variable2 and when the form is submited a web page will be displayed with the url below and the 2 variable words inserted into the url bar as stated below

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=VARIABLE1+VARIABLE2&meta=

]

So if i had variables of

variable1=Fishing
and
Variable2=World
in the address bar i would get the following

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=fishing+world&meta=

do you know what i mean

[alex_read]

Hi Richy, try this:

Imports System.Diagnostics

Public Class Form1

    Private Sub Form1_Load(ByVal sender As System.Object, _
      ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles MyBase.Load
        Dim newIEProcess As New Process
        Dim ieProcessStartInfo As New ProcessStartInfo
        ieProcessStartInfo.Arguments = _
          "http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=" & textbox1.text & _
          "+" & textbox2.text & "world&meta="
        ieProcessStartInfo.FileName = "iexplore.exe"
        newIEProcess.StartInfo = ieProcessStartInfo
        newIEProcess.Start()
    End Sub
End Class

[cameron2]

Ah yes but this will be tricky,
I'm not sure if there is an easier way but the way i would do it is use Findwindow to get the webbrowsers handle, then use findwindowex to get the url textbox then use the constant GET_TEXT (i'm not really sure how it goes) to grab the text, then i would insert the variables into the text and then put that text back into the url textbox.
Now as i said before this is quite complicated and i wouldn't be able to code this and if you don't have knowledge about windows API then i wouldn't suggest doing this.

There is probably an easier way of doing this but this is all i could think of at the moment.

[cameron2]

Alex_read's solution looks good.

[r1chyb]

Thanks but i seem to be getting this error

An unhandled exception of type 'System.Security.SecurityException' occurred in system.windows.forms.dll

Additional information: Request failed.

This is when i compile and click a button to start. I changed your code from on form load to button1_click

[alex_read]

Well that's odd - it's not the button that's doing this, that's for sure (and I've just tried it too this end before I wrote that). Ok then, can you look at the note they give on this error here please:
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/lib...startinfo.aspx

[kleinma]

why launch IE when you could just launch the URL itself, which in turn will launch the default browser. What if the user doesnt use IE, but firefox or safari?

A good quick example of the OS being able to handle this is go to start -> run and type a URL like www.vbforums.com and click ok.

This will launch your default browser to that URL. The same thing could be applied to process.start

process.start("http://www.vbforums.com")

change the string to be your google query.

[r1chyb]

Well that's odd - it's not the button that's doing this, that's for sure (and I've just tried it too this end before I wrote that). Ok then, can you look at the note they give on this error here please:
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/lib...startinfo.aspx

Thanks for this although i couldnt find an answer on there

and

why launch IE when you could just launch the URL itself, which in turn will launch the default browser. What if the user doesnt use IE, but firefox or safari?

A good quick example of the OS being able to handle this is go to start -> run and type a URL like www.vbforums.com and click ok.

This will launch your default browser to that URL. The same thing could be applied to process.start

process.start("http://www.vbforums.com")

change the string to be your google query.

I did this on a totaly new project with nothing but a command button to start this and it thrown up the same

Imports System
Public Class Form1
    Inherits System.Windows.Forms.Form

#Region " Windows Form Designer generated code "

    Public Sub New()
        MyBase.New()

        'This call is required by the Windows Form Designer.
        InitializeComponent()

        'Add any initialization after the InitializeComponent() call

    End Sub

    'Form overrides dispose to clean up the component list.
    Protected Overloads Overrides Sub Dispose(ByVal disposing As Boolean)
        If disposing Then
            If Not (components Is Nothing) Then
                components.Dispose()
            End If
        End If
        MyBase.Dispose(disposing)
    End Sub

    'Required by the Windows Form Designer
    Private components As System.ComponentModel.IContainer

    'NOTE: The following procedure is required by the Windows Form Designer
    'It can be modified using the Windows Form Designer.  
    'Do not modify it using the code editor.
    Friend WithEvents Button1 As System.Windows.Forms.Button
    <System.Diagnostics.DebuggerStepThrough()> Private Sub InitializeComponent()
        Me.Button1 = New System.Windows.Forms.Button
        Me.SuspendLayout()
        '
        'Button1
        '
        Me.Button1.Location = New System.Drawing.Point(88, 72)
        Me.Button1.Name = "Button1"
        Me.Button1.TabIndex = 2
        Me.Button1.Text = "Button1"
        '
        'Form1
        '
        Me.AutoScaleBaseSize = New System.Drawing.Size(5, 13)
        Me.ClientSize = New System.Drawing.Size(292, 126)
        Me.Controls.Add(Me.Button1)
        Me.Name = "Form1"
        Me.Text = "Form1"
        Me.ResumeLayout(False)

    End Sub

#End Region


    Private Sub Button1_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Button1.Click
        Process.Start("http://www.vbforums.com")
    End Sub

End Class

Do you think this an error with how i have set vb.net 2003 up?

[kleinma]

What OS are you running? Also is your account an administrator?

[r1chyb]

xp pro and yes im a admin

[kleinma]

strange that you would get a security exception. They are thrown when your user account/code doesn't have the needed permissions on the system to perform the given action.

Out of curiosity (only because this is a common cause for security exceptions) are you running this project from your local drive? Or from a network drive that is mapped?

[r1chyb]

Its from a networked drive.. ill give it ago from a local drive

[r1chyb]

AAAh this time it opened a window up but gave me an error. using the code you gave me

An unhandled exception of type 'System.ComponentModel.Win32Exception' occurred in system.dll

Additional information: The system cannot find the file specified

but when i used the code given to me by Alex it opend a window and competed the search term which is gr8 but your thought of not actually opening the window is what iwant.

[kleinma]

you can do it from a network drive, you just need to change some .NET framework settings to give full trust to network drives.

The process is pretty simple:

Navigate to the permissions manager app you need by going here:
Start -> Control Panel -> administrative tools -> Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 Configuration


Once in there, click on "Runtime Security Policy" in the left treeview, and then in the right panel, click on "Adjust Zone Security". Click next when the first screen comes up, then in the next screen, click on "Local Intranet", and then adjust the slider to "Full Trust". Click Next, then Finish.

Now anything from a network mapped drive will run with the same permissions as if it were on the local drive.

[kleinma]

AAAh this time it opened a window up but gave me an error. using the code you gave me

An unhandled exception of type 'System.ComponentModel.Win32Exception' occurred in system.dll

Additional information: The system cannot find the file specified

but when i used the code given to me by Alex it opend a window and competed the search term which is gr8 but your thought of not actually opening the window is what iwant.

Post the code you are using. I will take a look at it.

[r1chyb]

 Private Sub Button1_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Button1.Click
        Dim newIEProcess As New Process
        Dim ieProcessStartInfo As New ProcessStartInfo
        ieProcessStartInfo.Arguments = _
          "http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=" & textbox1.text & _
          "+" & textbox2.text & "world&meta="
        ieProcessStartInfo.FileName = "iexplore.exe"
        newIEProcess.StartInfo = ieProcessStartInfo
        newIEProcess.Start()

    End Sub

Thanks for all of your help with this )

[kleinma]

I tested this code and it works just fine

As a side note, is it your intention to append the word "world" to the end of whatever text is in textbox2? That is how your code (and my code) is doing it now, because I was not sure if that was what you wanted.

        Dim URL As String = String.Format("http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q={0}+{1}world&meta=", _
                                        TextBox1.Text, TextBox2.Text)
        Process.Start(URL)

[r1chyb]

No i just wanted the input from 2 text boxes to be passed to the url for searching.. I dont want to add the word world to the end of it that was just an example. but i think i can figure it our from here.

Thanks Alot Matt.. I will Rate you and your responses