Windows Forms FAQ resources

14. Windows Forms Patterns

14.4 How to get the hyperlink and the hyperlink text dragged from IE in my Control's drag-drop event?

Compiled from the newsgroup posts by Andy Fish and Brian:

You can do this in the DragDrop event handler of your control:

[C#]

try

{

//Use e.Data.GetData("UniformResourceLocator") to get the URL

System.IO.Stream ioStream=

(System.IO.Stream)e.Data.GetData("FileGroupDescriptor");

byte[] contents = new Byte[512];

ioStream.Read(contents,0,512);

ioStream.Close();

StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();

//The magic number 76 is the size of that part of the

//FILEGROUPDESCRIPTOR structure before the filename starts - cribbed

//from another usenet post.

for (int i=76; contents[i] != 0; i++)

{

sb.Append((char)contents[i]);

}

if (!sb.ToString(sb.Length-4,4).Equals(".url"))

{

throw new Exception("filename does not end in '.url'");

}

filename = sb.ToString(0,sb.Length-4);

}

catch(Exception ex)

{

MessageBox.Show(ex.ToString());

}

[VB.Net]

Try

'Use e.Data.GetData("UniformResourceLocator") to get the URL

System.IO.Stream ioStream=

CType(e.Data.GetData("FileGroupDescriptor"), System.IO.Stream)

Dim contents() As Byte = New Byte(512) {}

ioStream.Read(contents,0,512)

ioStream.Close()

Dim sb As StringBuilder = New StringBuilder()

'The magic number 76 is the size of that part of the

'FILEGROUPDESCRIPTOR structure before the filename starts - cribbed

'from another usenet post.

Dim i As Integer

For i = 76 To contents(i) 0 Step i + 1

sb.Append(CType(contents(i), Char))

If Not sb.ToString(sb.Length-4,4).Equals(".url") Then

Throw New Exception("filename does not end in '.url'")

End If

filename = sb.ToString(0,sb.Length-4)

Catch ex As Exception

MessageBox.Show(ex.ToString())

End Try