CODEWITHSUNDEEP
python-2.7
Brian O'Donnell
Brian O'Donnell

Reputation: 1886

Get URL file property from a Windows internet shortcut (.url) file

I want to retrieve the URL property of a Windows internet shortcut (.url) file. For example, there is a YouTube trailer "ROGUE ONE: A Star Wars Story TRAILER (2016)" at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ze2kpOZx_kU. If the URL is dragged from a Chrome browser to the Windows desktop a file "ROGUE ONE- A Star Wars Story TRAILER (2016) - YouTube.url" is created. In Windows 10 I can look at the file's property (e.g. right click and select 'Property'), select the 'Web Document' tab, and in the URL field there is "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ze2kpOZx_kU". How do I get this URL programmtically in Python 2.7?

Upvotes: 2

Views: 2642

Answers (3)

Fisal Assubaieye
Fisal Assubaieye

Reputation: 346

I've extracted all url strings from multiples .url files as below Python 3.9.5 script:

import glob
import os

for filename in glob.glob('*.url'):
 with open(filename, "r") as infile:
    for line in infile:
        if (line.startswith('URL')):
            url = line[4:]
            print (url)
            break

Note: save the above script as .py file inside same folder that contain .url files.

Upvotes: 0

Nuno André
Nuno André

Reputation: 5349

Windows Internet Shortcut (.url) files are INI files. They may have one or more sections (for apps or frames) and several properties (like IconFile or HotKey) but they always have an InternetShortcut section with a URL property.

So you can parse them with ConfigParser:

import ConfigParser

parser = ConfigParser.ConfigParser()

file = 'C:\Temp\ROGUE ONE- A Star Wars Story TRAILER (2016) - YouTube.url'
parser.read(file)
url = parser.get('InternetShortcut', 'url', True)

Arguments in get are:

  1. Section.
  2. Option.
  3. raw: True disables interpolation. Needed to avoid mistaking url's percent-encoding for inner references.

Upvotes: 2

Brian O'Donnell
Brian O'Donnell

Reputation: 1886

I was chasing this problem the wrong way! I thought I needed to extract the file information. Using Philip's suggestion I printed the contents and saw that the URL was inside. For example, dragging the movie's URL to C:\Temp and running the following I got the URL:

filename = 'C:\Temp\ROGUE ONE- A Star Wars Story TRAILER (2016) - YouTube.url'
with open(filename, "r") as infile:
    for line in infile:
        if (line.startswith('URL')):
            url = line[4:]
            break
print url

This gives: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ze2kpOZx_kU

Upvotes: 5

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