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Kitsune

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GetLocationURL - string conversion

I am struggling to convert strings correctly so that my toolbar can take the current URL and pass it as a string to another program as an argument. If I use a hard coded string it works fine but trying to get the actual URL dynamically is more difficult because the system function complains that it is not of type char *. This is a Unicode/BSTR to single byte char problem I think. m_pWebBrowser is merely a pointer to a iWebBrowser2 object declared as follows:
IWebBrowser2* m_pWebBrowser;

The part of the code I need help resolving is as follows:

                CString myLocationURL;
      CString myFullCmd;
      
      myLocationURL = m_pWebBrowser->GetLocationURL();
      myFullCmd = "c:\\vbprint.exe " + myLocationURL;
      system( myFullCmd );
SOLUTION
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AlexFM

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AlexFM

ATL is not MFC.
Sorry...

And if you're not using ATL there is the standard Windows API for converting from UNICODE to ANSI chars:

int WideCharToMultiByte(
  UINT CodePage,            // code page
  DWORD dwFlags,            // performance and mapping flags
  LPCWSTR lpWideCharStr,    // wide-character string
  int cchWideChar,          // number of chars in string
  LPSTR lpMultiByteStr,     // buffer for new string
  int cbMultiByte,          // size of buffer
  LPCSTR lpDefaultChar,     // default for unmappable chars
  LPBOOL lpUsedDefaultChar  // set when default char used
);
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ASKER

I am using ATL in this case. The code is in Visual C++ 6 for a toolbar in Internet Explorer (which is working fine by the way).

I will try the first suggestion and post back.

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ASKER

My apologies. I was so busy trying different things to make this work that I posted some code that I found on MSDN which was supposed to get the current URL. It didn't work because I am using ATL not MFC and an ActiveX control. Therefore, rather than the function GetLocationURL() which returns a CString, I need to use get_LocationURL and pass it a pointer to a BSTR. So my small bit of code would appear as follows:

BSTR *myLocationURL;
CString myFullCmd;
      
m_pWebBrowser->get_LocationURL( myLocationURL );
myFullCmd = "c:\\vbprint.exe " + myLocationURL;
USES_CONVERSION;
system(W2A((LPCTSTR)myFullCmd));

I need to concatenate a known string with this BSTR pointer and somehow pass the result to system as a char *. Maybe myFullCmd could be something other than CString?
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ASKER

I have increased the points because what I am really after is both retrieving the current URL and then passing it as a string via the system command.
In UNICODE configuration this should work:

CString sString;
BSTR sBSTR;

...

sString += sBSTR;

No comment has been added lately, so it's time to clean up this TA.
I will leave the following recommendation for this question in the Cleanup topic area:

Split: jhance {http:#9809495} & AlexFM {http:#9815787}

Please leave any comments here within the next seven days.
PLEASE DO NOT ACCEPT THIS COMMENT AS AN ANSWER!

Tinchos
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