Launching an application with an URL

Question

I want to access a desktop application and launch it on navigating to a 'http' URL. How can i achieve this?

Here's what i have found so far - iTunes (i want almost the same functionality with my application) registers a handler for 'itms' and does a javascript call to this 'itms://' URL when the http URL is invoked. I have tried this out and this works well (and is fairly straightforward).

I have also heard about IE MIME-Types. Do they work on a similar mechanism? Or are they different? What are the advantages or otherwise of going with this approach over the iTunes approach?

Are there any other ways of achieving what i want to?

Answer 1

If You want to launch a program via http:// , you can run a small web server on Your desktop, write a simple script to change some file after accessing you server via http://, and monitor the change on that file via a file alternation monitor. When the file changes, simply make an action (execution of an file, or something) via the file alternation monitor.

Answer 2

You can do that by registering a protocol handler in the Registry (there is no need to run a web server on your desktop):

Registering an Application to a URL Protocol

(Please also note the security alert mentioned in that article. URL handlers might open security holes on your desktop)

Answer 3

Using a URI scheme just for that purpose is in conflict with the Web Architecture (see http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-webarch-20041215/#URI-scheme). And yes, this applies to Apple's schemes (itms, ical...) too.

The proper way to achieve that goal is to mint a media type, to serve content with that media type, and to register the application as handler for that type. An example for a specification where this was used is RFC 4709 (http://greenbytes.de/tech/webdav/rfc4709.html).