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Possible channels of communication between Javascript on HTML page and a windows EXE ?

Answer 1

A:

You would need to write a browser plugin to do that.

What are you trying to accomplish?

Byron Whitlock 2010-08-23 22:47:10

I think I described what I need to do, two way communication between a process on the web page and another on the local machine of the visitor. regular RPC, send commands from one to another and so on. it is working right now with a custom protocol but some browsers do not perform perfectly with it

Alexander 2010-08-24 09:24:54

Answer 2

A:

You can use an embedded ActiveX (COM) object and communicate between both platforms. I've done it (and would not have believed it possible had I not). It's nasty but it works. In the project I used it on I had no choice (which is about the only reason to ever do this). I built the COM object in C#.net and exposed an interface to COM for use on the page. It goes something like this:

    function doSomethingInteresting() {
        // in your js:
           var obj = document.getElementById('yourObjectId');
           obj.MethodNameDefinedOnYourCOMObject("someParameterValue");
    }

        // and your HTML looks like this; note that you can even catch events thrown from the COM object in Js...
    <body>
    <form>
      <object id="yourObjectId" height="0" width="0" classid="clsid:99999999-9999-9999-9999-999999999999" onerror="oError()" VIEWASTEXT></object>
    <script for="yourObjectId" event="ThisIsTheJavaScriptEventHandlerMethod(parameterName)" language="javascript">
    // event handling here for the COM object
            function yourObjectId::ThisIsTheJavaScriptEventHandlerMethod(parameterName) {
          // you can process the parameterName passed from the object here
            }
    </script>
    </form>
    </body>

Happy coding!

Tahbaza 2010-08-23 23:02:16

Tahbaza, the communication is supposed to work on the 4 major browsers, so ActiveX is out of question. Right now IE is not 95% of browser market any more for a long time already ;)

Alexander 2010-08-24 09:23:30

The object tag is supported in non-IE browsers, Alexander. Are you saying you must support Linux/Mac?

Tahbaza 2010-08-24 12:03:20

Check it: http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_object.asp

Tahbaza 2010-08-24 12:07:57

yes the object tag is, but the activex technology is not supported by anything else than IE. I maybe missed something, but Firefox / Safari / Chrome do not load activex plugins AFAIK

Alexander 2010-08-25 02:20:57

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Possible channels of communication between Javascript on HTML page and a windows EXE ?

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