Saving a file TO an application - Can A VB Application accept an external file

Question

2.50/5 (2 votes)

See more:

What I need to do is send a file to a visual Studio (VB) written application. The save dialog is activated by selecting the save button on the web page. I am presented with a choice of saving the file to disk OR sending it to an application of my choice.

:confused: Can you tell me what it takes to have the file be read into a Visual basic application as a data file? In other words how do I program a VB app to accept such a file sent to it? I'm having a hard time finding out how to do this with my own research. :confused:

The action does not have to activate the program since it will already be running. But I do need to read it into a variable object somehow. The file stream will also be coming in from the internet through my browser if that makes a difference.

Thanks.

Posted 25-Feb-11 19:25pm

Nobia

Add a Solution

1 solution

Add a Solution

Add your solution here

Treat my content as plain text, not as HTML

Preview 0

…

Existing Members

Sign in to your account

...or Join us

Download, Vote, Comment, Publish.

Your Email
Password
Forgot your password?

Your Email
This email is in use. Do you need your password?
Optional Password

I have read and agree to the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy
Please subscribe me to the CodeProject newsletters

When answering a question please:

Read the question carefully.
Understand that English isn't everyone's first language so be lenient of bad spelling and grammar.
If a question is poorly phrased then either ask for clarification, ignore it, or edit the question and fix the problem. Insults are not welcome.
Don't tell someone to read the manual. Chances are they have and don't get it. Provide an answer or move on to the next question.

Let's work to help developers, not make them feel stupid.

This content, along with any associated source code and files, is licensed under The Code Project Open License (CPOL)

MarqW · Answer 1 · 2011-02-26T03:50:00

Solution 1

I'm assuming you mean when saving a file off the internet when it asks "Save this File", or "Open with ..." you want to select your application.

This works by the standard Windows file association (File extensions, ie. gif, jpg, xls etc.).

Depending on the way the file association is set up with your application, it'll use DDE (I'm afraid I don't know much about DDE though), or it will pass the file name as a command line parameter to the program.

In VB6, the commandline parameters can be read by the Command() function

Posted 26-Feb-11 3:50am

MarqW

Comments

Manfred Rudolf Bihy 26-Feb-11 15:13pm

Moved to a comment on OP's behalf:
[Nobia wrote]
Thank You. I am familiar with both points you raised. However I am currently writing the Application so don't have an executable to associate with an extension. Unless I can make that link with the Debug file thats created when running the App from with in Visual Studio? In any case I still would need to know how to handle the file on the programming side once I did set that association outside of Visual Studio. I would also like to be able to send a file of any extension if possible.

What I am trying to do is avoid the 'Save to disk -- load into program' step.

I have intermediate experience with Vb but only in file based - data handling, so this is outside my usual experience. I may not need an actual code example (though that would be faster) but if someone could at a minimum point me to some documentation or proper keywords for more research.

MarqW 28-Feb-11 9:47am

The only way to avoid the "Save to disk" command is by creating a plugin per browser. Even then the user may request a prompt from the browser anyway (security against malware)

Another way is writing an ActiveX control and embed that on the webpage. You can pass parameters via the page HTML.