What is the best way to get the internet explorer current url as a string

Question

I am looking for a way to return a url as a string from the current Internet Explorer URL.

This approach uses dde. It very fast and works well except it returns a very long string in two parts both with quotes.

uses
  ddeman;

function GetURL(Service: string): string;
var
  ClDDE: TDDEClientConv;
  temp: PAnsiChar;
begin
  Result := '';
  ClDDE := TDDEClientConv.Create(nil);
  with ClDDE do
  begin
    SetLink(Service, 'WWW_GetWindowInfo');
    temp := RequestData('0xFFFFFFFF');
    Result := StrPas(temp);
    StrDispose(temp);
    CloseLink;
  end;
  ClDDE.Free;
end;

For example this returns: "http://core2.staticworld.net/images/article/2014/01/counterfeit_android_apps1-100227383-medium.jpg","http://core2.staticworld.net/images/article/2014/01/counterfeit_android_apps1-100227383-medium.jpg"

But I am looking for just the first part before the first comma without the quotes: http://core2.staticworld.net/images/article/2014/01/counterfeit_android_apps1-100227383-medium.jpg

Any suggestions for another approach or how to parse the string to produce the result shown without quotes and just the first part of the string?

Why can't you just extract the part before the comma and then remove the quotes yourself? — Ken White, Apr 10 '14 at 20:53
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8445742/how-to-get-the-url-of-the-internet-explorer-tabs-with-pid-of-each-tab — David Heffernan, Apr 10 '14 at 22:10
I wonder how do you define *current* url when there're multiple ie windows with multiple tabs all in background. — Sertac Akyuz, Apr 10 '14 at 23:49
Every time I see a comma-seperated, double-quoted string I got `TStringList.DelimitedText` in my mind :o) — Sir Rufo, Apr 11 '14 at 06:26

Ken White · Accepted Answer · 2014-04-10T22:04:31.370

2

You can parse the string pretty simply yourself:

// Extract string up to position of the ,
Temp := Copy(Temp, 1, Pos(',', Temp) - 1);
// Remove double-quotes from resulting string
Temp := StringReplace(temp, '"', '', [rfReplaceAll]);

Here's a sample console app that uses the logic above on the sample response you provided, and outputs the final contents to the console:

program Project2;

{$APPTYPE CONSOLE}

uses
  SysUtils;

const
  LinkStr = '"http://core2.staticworld.net/images/article/2014/01/counterfeit_android_apps1-100227383-medium.jpg","http://core2.staticworld.net/images/article/2014/01/counterfeit_android_apps1-100227383-medium.jpg"';

var
  Temp: string;

begin
  Temp := Copy(LinkStr, 1, Pos(',', LinkStr) - 1);
  Temp := StringReplace(Temp, '"', '', [rfReplaceAll]);
  Writeln('After: ' + Temp);
  ReadLn;
end.

Output:

enter image description here

edited Apr 10 '14 at 22:04

answered Apr 10 '14 at 20:56

Ken White

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@Ken... the quotes are removed ok, but unfortunately the entire string is returned instead of the first part of the string before the comma. – Bill Apr 10 '14 at 21:11
@Bill: That's not true. See my edited answer, which uses the **exact** string you provided (I copied and pasted it), and outputs just the first portion (up to the comma) with the quotes removed. – Ken White Apr 10 '14 at 22:05
It would be nice to know if there are alternatives to using dde for this as well. Thanks Ken for your assistance. – Bill Apr 10 '14 at 22:22
@Bill: You asked for either/or. I didn't have an answer to the first, but the parsing was easy. :-) As you say it's "very fast and works well", and the parsing code is also very fast and works well... ? – Ken White Apr 10 '14 at 22:25

What is the best way to get the internet explorer current url as a string

1 Answers1