RE: URL in RPG, passing switches to browser or PC program

I've tried to open a browser and pass parms to the application via question
mark and ampersands. Seems anything at the ampersand and after gets
truncated. Is there something I am missing?

Thanks,

Craig

-----Original Message-----
From: rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Scott Klement
Sent: Monday, April 16, 2007 8:44 PM
To: RPG programming on the AS400 / iSeries
Subject: Re: URL in RPG, passing switches to browser or PC program

Hi John,

Microsoft document
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;283225
indicates the
"url.dll,FileProtocolHandler" technique is old-school and
"shell32.dll,ShellExecute" should be used instead. It appears that
"ShellExecute" does allow params to be passed, but I'll be darned
if it will work for me.

As far as I know, you can't call ShellExecute (which is an API) directly
via RunDLL. In order to run an API in a DLL via RunDLL, the API has to
be specifically designed for the RunDLL command -- and I don't think
ShellExecute is so designed. You'll notice that the URL you provided
to MSDN actually uses a Java class for ShellExecute rather than trying
to call it via RunDLL.

There is a variant of ShellExecute that's designed for RunDLL. It's
(aptly named) ShellExec_RunDLL. So you'd code the following in your RPG
program (via QCMDEXC or similar):

STRPCCMD PCCMD('rundll32 Shell32,ShellExec_RunDLL "mysheet.xls"')

And, although that's very interesting, it doesn't solve your actual
problem. You still can only pass one parameter (the name of the file to
open) to the ShellExec_RunDLL function. So I'm not sure that it really
helps you in any way to know about it!

However, the "start" command should get the job done. It's uglier
because of the extra command prompt window that it opens, but it'll work.

STRPCCMD PCCMD('start excel /r "mysheet.xls"')

I can't think of a better alternative right now, but if I think of one,
I'll share it.



johnking@xxxxxxx wrote:

All,

A February thread in this list described how to use 'rundll32.exe' via

STRPCCMD

to access PC documents from an RPG application. This works well, but

rundll32

only provides one parameter - the file name.

Executing the command: STRPCCMD PCCMD('rundll32

url.dll,FileProtocolHandler

"mysheet.xls"') does indeed call Excel from a green-screen app, but does

not

permit passing the /r 'read only' switch that prevents users from altering

the

document. We would like to prevent that.

Microsoft document
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;283225 indicates

the

"url.dll,FileProtocolHandler" technique is old-school and
"shell32.dll,ShellExecute" should be used instead. It appears that

"ShellExecute"

does allow params to be passed, but I'll be darned if it will work for me.

Any number of variations of the string:
"STRPCCMD PCCMD('rundll32 shell32.dll,ShellExecute
0,"open","z:\mysheet.xls","/r","",5') " have been tried but they all end

up with

a Windows error box "An exception occurred while trying to run
"shell32.dll,ShellExecute...". Am I just having trouble with single- and
double-quotes or is there something fundamentally deeper that I don't

understand

about passing params to PC programs?

JK
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