downloading

[SteveCRM]

is there a way to initiate a download? like make the download window pop up? I know I could open an IE window to the file but I want to be able to save it to a location...so how could I do that?

[CornedBee]

You could create your own download window...

[parksie]

I think it's URLDownloadToFile or something similar.

[jim mcnamara]

Call LoadLibrary -- use shdocvw.dll. Call is: DoFileDownload.

long DoFileDownload(LPCSTR url);

MSDN doesn't document this call, but it's part of IE 5 & 6. It brings up the cute dialog boxes.

[CornedBee]

So you'd have to do:

typedef long (WINAPI* L_CASTR)(LPCSTR);

HMODULE hMyDll = LoadLibrary(TEXT("shdocvw.dll"));
if(hMyDll == NULL) {} // error

L_CASTR pDoFileDownload = (L_CASTR)GetProcAddress(hMyDll, TEXT("DoFileDownload")); // DoFileDownloadA?

// call
pDoFileDownload("http://www...."); 

[SteveCRM]

Parksie...URLDownloadToFile gets the html not the file

okay I tried the code cornedbee gave...but a messagebox popped up giving a wierd error (I don't have any message boxes in my program...its not my custom error)



as a test Im downloading this file: http://www.terminalstudio.com/files/instlawnm.exe
(first one i saw on download.com )

[jim mcnamara]

It has to be unicode text. My protoype is wrong.

Sorry.

[parksie]

So you want LPCWSTR (or for the non-masochists, const wchar_t*).

[SteveCRM]

so

ypedef long (WINAPI* L_CASTR)(LPCSTR(const wchar_t*));

					HMODULE hMyDll = LoadLibrary(TEXT("shdocvw.dll"));
					if(hMyDll == NULL) {} // error
					
					L_CASTR pDoFileDownload = (L_CASTR)GetProcAddress(hMyDll, TEXT("DoFileDownload")); // DoFileDownloadA?
					
					// call
					pDoFileDownload("http://wwwterminalstudio.com/files/instlawnn.exe");

? 5 errors

[Zaei]

URLDownloadToFile() certainly downloads files. It gets raw data from the server, and saves it to a file. Ive used it before to download files.

Z.

[SteveCRM]

Oh im such an idiot! It gets the html of a web page...but if you go to an exe, it gets the info on the exe When I was using that before I couldn't figure out how to get the % done....can you show me? (msdn's example confused the hell out of me)

thanks

[CornedBee]

One more thing:
pDoFileDownload(L"URL");
because when you're using UNICODE, you're using UNICODE.

[parksie]

If you're reading the URL from user input, or something else that isn't known at compile time, you'll need the MultiByteToWideChar function:

string WideToANSI(const wstring &sIn) {
	int iReq = WideCharToMultiByte(CP_ACP, 0, sIn.c_str(), -1, NULL, 0, NULL, NULL);
	char *pcBuf = new char[iReq];
	WideCharToMultiByte(CP_ACP, 0, sIn.c_str(), -1, pcBuf, iReq, NULL, NULL);
	string sTemp = pcBuf;
	delete[] pcBuf;
	return sTemp;
}

wstring ANSIToWide(const string &sIn) {
	int iReq = MultiByteToWideChar(CP_ACP, 0, sIn.c_str(), -1, NULL, 0);
	wchar_t *pcBuf = new wchar_t[iReq];
	MultiByteToWideChar(CP_ACP, 0, sIn.c_str(), -1, pcBuf, iReq);
	wstring sTemp = pcBuf;
	delete[] pcBuf;
	return sTemp;
}

[CornedBee]

The stream classes do know wchar_t, so when you're using cin, you don't need to convert, cin does that for you.

[parksie]

It never seemed to do that properly before - probably a buggy implementation *looks daggers at microsoft*



What if you're looking it up from the Registry then, or from user input in a text box...

PS: Most of this stuff will be transparent when you stick to C++, but the Windows API isn't template-based (yet ) so you have to mess around sometimes.

PPS: I wonder if that transparent conversion extends to stringstreams...