CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c++cwindowsbrowser
Matt
Matt

Reputation: 88057

Launch web page from my application

Ok, this probably has a really simple answer, but I've never tried to do it before: How do you launch a web page from within an app? You know, "click here to go to our FAQ", and when they do it launches their default web browser and goes to your page. I'm working in C/C++ in Windows, but if there's a broader, more portable way to do it I'd like to know that, too.

Upvotes: 10

Views: 16207

Answers (6)

zakker
zakker

Reputation: 41

You can use ShellExecute function. Sample code:

ShellExecute( NULL, "open", "http://stackoverflow.com", "", ".", SW_SHOWDEFAULT );

Upvotes: 3

Sig Gam
Sig Gam

Reputation: 11

For some reason, ShellExecute do not work sometimes if application is about to terminate right after call it. We've added Sleep(5000) after ShellExecute and it helps.

Upvotes: 1

nico
nico

Reputation: 69

For the record (since you asked for a cross-platform option), the following works well in Linux:

#include <unistd.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

void launch(const std::string &url)
{
  std::string browser = getenv("BROWSER");
  if(browser == "") return;

  char *args[3];
  args[0] = (char*)browser.c_str();
  args[1] = (char*)url.c_str();
  args[2] = 0;

  pid_t pid = fork();
  if(!pid)
    execvp(browser.c_str(), args);
}

Use as:

launch("http://example.com");

Upvotes: 4

twk
twk

Reputation: 17320

Please read the docs for ShellExecute closely. To really bulletproof your code, they recommend initializing COM. See the docs here, and look for the part that says "COM should be initialized as shown here". The short answer is to do this (if you haven't already init'd COM):

CoInitializeEx(NULL, COINIT_APARTMENTTHREADED | COINIT_DISABLE_OLE1DDE)

Upvotes: 4

Patrick Desjardins
Patrick Desjardins

Reputation: 140793

#include <windows.h>

void main()
{
   ShellExecute(NULL, "open", "http://yourwebpage.com",
            NULL, NULL, SW_SHOWNORMAL);
}

Upvotes: 19

Brian Ensink
Brian Ensink

Reputation: 11218

I believe you want to use the ShellExecute() function which should respect the users choice of default browser.

Upvotes: 4

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