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Sep 17th, 2006

Call external program from ASP.NET

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Hi,
Does anyone know how to run an external program from ASP.NET.
The System.Diagnostics.Process or Shell() functions do not work for opening GUI applications like NotePad. I need my ASP.NET web form to open a Windows application that we be installed on the Client. Any ideas?

Thanks,
Mike

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mikefitz

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Sep 22nd, 2006

Re: Call external program from ASP.NET

I was able to get this to work using the
System.Diagnostics.Process. I did this by:

string fileLocation = @"filename";
Process test = new Process();
test.StartInfo.FileName = fileLocation;
test.Start();

leonpwhirl

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Sep 22nd, 2006

Re: Call external program from ASP.NET

If you want to open an external app on the client, then asp.net won't help. Asp.net is server side. When using System.Diagnostics.Process, you can open external apps, but it opens on the web server, not the clients machine.

If you want to open an app, such as notepad, on the client machine, you need to use client side scripting such as javascript. NOTE: Most of the time, this won't work unless you lossen up the security, so it's very risky.

Anyway, here's a sample code to launch apps on the client.

ASP.NET Syntax (Toggle Plain Text)
var theShell = new ActiveXObject("Shell.Application");
var theApp = "C:\\Windows\\Notepad.exe";
theShell.ShellExecute(theApp, "", "", "open", "1");
var theShell = new ActiveXObject("Shell.Application");
var theApp = "C:\\Windows\\Notepad.exe";
theShell.ShellExecute(theApp, "", "", "open", "1");

M_K_Higa

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Sep 23rd, 2006

Re: Call external program from ASP.NET

That will work just fine. Thanks

mikefitz

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Sep 25th, 2006

Re: Call external program from ASP.NET

That is really only suitable for an intranet application, and an IE-only browser environment.

tgreer

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Made Her Cry

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Sep 26th, 2006

Re: Call external program from ASP.NET

You are correct. This is more suitable for an intranet environment. Thanks for the clarification. I'd like to stress, even in an intranet environment, you still have to relax the security requirements a whole lot to make this work.

M_K_Higa

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Sep 27th, 2006

Re: Call external program from ASP.NET

My little advice: Never mess with the client computer!
I hate when web pages try to do that.

ManicCW

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Jun 25th, 2009

Re: Call external program from ASP.NET

I put :

JavaScript Syntax (Toggle Plain Text)
<script language="javascript" >
 
        function todo()
        {
        var theShell = new ActiveXObject("Shell.Application");
        var theApp = "C:\\Windows\\Notepad.exe";
        theShell.ShellExecute(theApp, "", "", "open", "1");
        }
    </script>
<script language="javascript" >
    
        function todo()
        {
        var theShell = new ActiveXObject("Shell.Application");
        var theApp = "C:\\Windows\\Notepad.exe";
        theShell.ShellExecute(theApp, "", "", "open", "1");
        }
    </script>

and then

<input type = "BUTTON" value = "Push Me!" name = "Command1" onclick="todo()">
but it doesnt seem to work

please helpme.

Last edited by peter_budo; Jun 26th, 2009 at 4:04 am. Reason: Keep It Organized - For easy readability, always wrap programming code within posts in [code] (code blocks) and [icode] (inline code) tags.

tcornejo

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This thread is more than three months old

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