I'm generating an HTML report by C# to print pairs of files in a table which has 3 columns: the first two columns used for the filenames and the 3rd column is a hyperlink Compare - I want this link to run WinMerge to compare to two files and I currently don't know how to do it. Please help!
+1
A:
Sorry this answer sucks, but you can't launch an just any external application via a click, as this would be a serious security issue, this functionality isn't available in HTML or javascript. Think of just launching cmd.exe with args...you want to launch WinMerge with arguments, but you can see the security problems introduced by allowing this for anything.
The only possibly viable exception I can think of would be a protocol handler (since these are explicitly defined handlers), like winmerge://, though the best way to pass 2 file parameters I'm not sure of, if it's an option it's worth looking into, but I'm not sure what you are or are not allowed to do to the client, so this may be a non-starter solution.
Nick Craver
2010-05-10 03:02:42
A:
The reasonable way how to launch apps from HTML is through url schemes. So you can launch email via mailto: links and irc through irc: links. Individual apps can implement these schemes, but I'm not sure WinMerge does this.
Jakub Hampl
2010-05-10 03:03:37
+1
A:
Try this
<html>
<head>
<script type="text/javascript">
function runProgram()
{
var shell = new ActiveXObject("WScript.Shell");
var appWinMerge = "\"C:\\Program Files\\WinMerge\\WinMergeU.exe\" /e /s /u /wl /wr /maximize";
var fileLeft = "\"D:\\Path\\to\\your\\file\"";
var fileRight= "\"D:\\Path\\to\\your\\file2\"";
shell.Run(appWinMerge + " " + fileLeft + " " + fileRight);
}
</script>
</head>
<body>
<a href="javascript:runProgram()">Run program</a>
</body>
</html>
Nam Gi VU
2010-05-10 03:43:16
This is what I want. I try and note that we also need to allow the browser to run javascript and ActiveX. Thanks a lot!
Nam Gi VU
2010-05-10 03:45:56