This is an internal web application where we would like the Web pages to contain links to several utilities that are Win32 EXE. The EXEs are trusted and produced by us. (don't care if it asks if its ok to Run or Save). I tried direct link (e.g. C:\notepad.exe) which works locally only. (This will be a share on the network). Tried File:/// and did not work.
IE7 is the browser needed.
This assumes the exe is somewhere you know on the user's computer:
Launch the executable
<script>
function LaunchApp() {
if (!document.all) {
alert ("Available only with Internet Explorer.");
return;
}
var ws = new ActiveXObject("WScript.Shell");
ws.Exec("C:\\Windows\\notepad.exe");
}
</script>
Documentation: ActiveXObject, Exec Method (Windows Script Host).
How about something like:
<a href="\\DangerServer\Downloads\MyVirusArchive.exe"
type="application/octet-stream">Don't download this file!</a>
You can see how iTunes does it by using Fiddler to follow the action when using the link:
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=80028216
It downloads a js file
On windows: the js file determines if iTunes was installed on the computer or not:
looks for an activeX browser component if IE, or a browser plugin if FF
If iTunes is installed then the browser is redirected to an URL with a special transport: itms://...
The browser invokes the handler (provided by the iTunes exe). This includes starting up the exe if it is not already running.
iTunes exe uses the rest of the special url to show a specific page to the user.
Note that the exe, when installed, installed URL protocol handlers for "itms" transport with the browsers.
Not a simple engineering project to duplicate, but definitely do-able. If you go ahead with this, please consider making the relevant software open source.
In windows, specified protocol for application can be registered in Registry.
In this msdn doc shows Registering an Application to a URI Scheme.
For example, an executable files 'alert.exe' is to be started. The following item can be registered.
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT
alert
(Default) = "URL:Alert Protocol"
URL Protocol = ""
DefaultIcon
(Default) = "alert.exe,1"
shell
open
command
(Default) = "C:\Program Files\Alert\alert.exe"
Then you can write a html to test
<head>
<title>alter</title>
</head>
<body>
<a href="alert:" >alert</a>
<body>
As part of the solution that Larry K suggested, registering your own protocol might be a possible solution.
The web page could contain a simple link to download and install the application - which would then register its own protocol in the Windows registry.
The web page would then contain links with parameters that would result in the registerd program being opened and any parameters specified in the link being passed to it.
There's a good description of how to do this on MSDN
Did you try a UNC share?
\\server\share\foo.exe
Are you saying that you are having trouble inserting into a web page a link to a file that happens to have a .exe extension?
If that is the case, then take one step back. Imagine the file has a .htm extension, or a .css extension. How can you make that downloadable? If it is a static link, then the answer is clear: the file needs to be in the docroot for the ASP.NET app. IIS + ASP.NET serves up many kinds of content: .htm files, .css files, .js files, image files, implicitly. All these files are somewhere under the docroot, which by default is c:\inetpub\wwwroot, but for your webapp is surely something different. The fact that the file you want to expose has an .exe extension does not change the basic laws of IIS physics. The exe has to live under the docroot. The network share thing might work for some browsers.
The alternative of course is to dynamically write the content of the file directly to the Response.OutputStream. This way you don't need the .exe to be in your docroot, but it is not a direct download link. In this scenario, the file might be downloaded by a button click.
Something like this:
Response.Clear();
string FullPathFilename = "\\\\server\\share\\CorpApp1.exe";
string archiveName= System.IO.Path.GetFileName(FullPathFilename);
Response.ContentType = "application/octet-stream";
Response.AddHeader("content-disposition", "filename=" + archiveName);
Response.TransmitFile(FullPathFilename);
Response.End();
if the applications are C#, you can use ClickOnce deployment, which is a good option if you can't guarentee the user will have the app, however you'll have to re-build the apps with deployment options and grab some boilerplate code from each project.
You can also use Javascript.
Or you can register an application to handle a new web protocol you can define. This could also be an "app selection" protocol, so each time an app is clicked it would link to a page on your new protocol, all handling of this protocol is then passed to your "selection app" which uses arguments to find and launch an app on the clients PC.
HTH
Related
I've downloaded the .Net Server and ajax library
We need to be able to edit documents directly from the WebDav Server.
I've succeeded doing so with the javascript code using MicrosoftOfficeEditDocument and JavaEditDocument
I'd like to be able to have in my pages a link as follows
\server\DAV\path\file
When I place a similar link like above, it doesn't open the file. When I copy link and place in windows run command, it opens
Is it possible to have direct links to webdav storage files for opening?
Also, Is there a planned solution for the jar file running in Chrome?
I've followed the instruction for https://java.com/en/download/faq/chrome.xml#npapichrome
This allows chrome to load the jar file, but They say they stop supporting.
To open a document from a web page your link must be HTTP or HTTPS, that is start with http://server/. It would not work with a network path.
In your case URL must look like http://server/DAV/path/file.ext
I have tried for my app to load fonts on request. I tried to read fonts from the a project directory which is created by my app, and it reads all the info it needs.
First of all, I want to ask if there is a way to know if there is an app-storage:// like in adobe air, because THAT IS KILLING ME! I cannot create temporary files to be read on runtime by the app and place, for example, a style sheet with the new loaded fonts on runtime via JS.!
If there is one, please let me know!!!
Now a very dirty solution. This is what I had done up to now:
Just to let know everybody, my solution relies on :
run the app as administrator (a must to have)
softlinking the user's project font folder.
now lets get the facts:
webkit cannot render fronts coming from a "file:///" url
I had tried using file:/// with no success, and neither converting the SVG fonts to base64 did the trick at all. Trying to do on runtime stylesheets was even worse, so looking for solutions I had to rely on command prompts. For now I'm running this on windows and works pearls:
var WinDoExec = function(cmdline){
var echoCmd = ["C:\\Windows\\System32\\cmd.exe","/C"];
echoCmd = $.merge(echoCmd,cmdline);
console.log(echoCmd);
var echo = Ti.Process.createProcess(echoCmd);
echo.setOnReadLine(function(data) {
console.log(data.toString());
});
echo.stdout.attach(echo.stdin);
echo.launch();
};
so from here, I had to create a mklink (soft link on ntfs) from the user's project font folder to the application font directory, so it could be accessible on runtime.
WinDoExec(["mklink","/D","C:\\Program Files(x86)\\myapp\\Resources\\assets\\fonts\\userfonts","C:\\Users\\windowsuser\\projectAppFolder\\ProjectName\\Fonts"]);
with this, creating a soft link into the application in runtime fixes the issue of loading the custom fonts for the user's project into the runtime app...
I know this is kinda "abusive" with the program environment, but I really wish there was a way for the app to have a url accessible path (such storage url path or temporary url path) in order to process things on runtime. I could copy the fonts into the temporary url container folder and do my stuff without affecting the app system folder at all.
So if you guys on tidekit read this, please allow developers to have accessible url paths for temporary objects (like user's svg/ttf files) that I can copy there and use on runtime.
Thanks.
Here's what I would like to accomplish:
I have a file stored in Windows Azure Blob Storage (or for that matter any file which is not on my web server but accessible via a URL).
I want to force download a file without actually downloading the file on my web server first i.e. browser should automatically fetch the file from this external URL and prompts the user to download it.
Possible Solutions Explored:
Here's what I have explored so far (and why they won't work):
Using something like FileContentResult as described here Returning a file to View/Download in ASP.NET MVC to download the file. This solution would require me to fetch the contents on my server and then stream from my server to the browser. For this reason this solution won't work.
Using HTML 5 download attribute: HTML 5 download attribute would have worked perfectly fine however the problem is that while it is really a very neat solution, it is not supported in all browsers.
Changing the file's content type: Another thing I could do (at least for the files that I own) to change the content type property of the file to something that the browser wouldn't understand and thus would be forced to download the file. This might work in some browsers however not in all as IE is smart enough to go beyond the content type and sees the file's content to determine the content type. Furthermore if I don't own the files, then I won't have access to changing the content type of the file.
Simply put, in my controller action I should be able to specify the URL of the file and somehow browser should force download the file.
Is this something which can be accomplished? If yes, then any ideas how I could accomplish this?
Simply put, in my controller action I should be able to specify the URL of the file and somehow browser should force download the file [without exposing the URL of the file to the client].
You can't. If the final URL is to remain hidden, your server must serve the data, so your server must download the file from the URL.
Your client can't download a file it can't get the URL to.
You can create file transfer WCF service (REST) which will stream your content from blob storage or from other sources through your file managers to client browser directly by URL.
https://{service}/FileTransfer/DownloadFile/{id, synonym, filename etc}
Blob path won't be exposed, web application will be free from file transfer issues.
how can we find the path of browser default downloads folder in c# / asp.net?
For example I can get the path of user desktop like :
Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.Desktop)
Thanks..
You can't find that out in a web application. It's up to the user to decide which browser to use and how to configure it and where to save downloaded files by default and you have absolutely no way of interfering or even knowing his choices from a web application.
First of all looking at MSDN on Environment.SpecialFolder there is no download folder, and the reason is that this is different for every browser.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.environment.specialfolder.aspx
And there have nothing to do with asp.net, if you look it from the server side you just get a directory on nowhere, meaning that this have nothing to do with the web application that run under the pool.
What you can do
You can use the HttpRuntime.AppDomainAppPath and use it to know where your site lives, and there place a "download" directory and use this full path:
HttpRuntime.AppDomainAppPath + "download/"
for download/upload files.
So, I've created my wonderful winforms app that I want to unleash upon the world, and now I am trying to create a simple website to host some basic information and link to the setup file (msi installer file )....
I have a button on the asp.net page and the setup file setupApp.msi in same folder as the asp.net page. I am currently trying the following:
Response.Redirect("http://./SetupApp.msi");
But this best guess at what to do is not working. Is there something wrong with Mime types here? What do I need to put in the click event to allow users to download this file?
The path you are passing in to the method is not valid (there's no server name called ".").
You can pass in a relative path and it should work fine because ASP.NET will resolve the path:
Response.Redirect("SetupApp.msi")
Or if it's not in the same folder, try one of these:
Response.Redirect("../Downloads/SetupApp.msi")
Response.Redirect("~/SomeFolder/SetupApp.msi")
Keep in mind that you don't necessarily have to do the whole redirect at all. Instead of writing code in an ASPX file you could just have a link to your MSI:
Download my app!