Dragging and dropping an Image Url from Internet Explorer?

July 12, 2006 @ 3:05 am

I have an application where I am trying to drag image links from Internet Explorer into a textbox using OleDrag Drop. This should be easy to do, and it’s easy to actually get an image reference. However, the problem is that the data that is being dropped is a filename that points to the Temporary Internet Files folder, rather than a URL in the browser.

C:\Users\rstrahl\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5\W1BGBVQJ\sailbig.jpg

The same thing happens when you drag an image into a new instance of Internet Explorer – you do see the image but if you check out the properties it actually shows the local filename as opposed to the URL.

Does anybody know whether it’s possible to pick up the original Web image URL with drag and drop? This must be possible somehow as IE internally can drag and drop between instances and pick up a full image reference – for example in an Html Edit box.

Anybody know how this can be done?

I’m using a Foxpro application here, and using OleDragDrop characteristics to pick up the data that’s being passed but I just tried this out in .NET and I get the same data.

Stumped.

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re: Dragging and dropping an Image Url from Internet Explorer?
by Vadivel Kumar July 12, 2006 @ 6:19 am

I think there is no way in getting this done. But, hooking in IE thru your program may help which is tedious job.

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Vadi

re: Dragging and dropping an Image Url from Internet Explorer?
by DuncanS July 12, 2006 @ 8:07 am

You need to fiddle with the "HTML Format" clipboard format. An example:

private void textBox1_DragEnter(object sender, System.Windows.Forms.DragEventArgs e)
{
e.Effect = DragDropEffects.Copy;
}

private void textBox1_DragDrop(object sender, System.Windows.Forms.DragEventArgs e)
{
string clipboardHtml = (string)e.Data.GetData("HTML Format");
string htmlFragment = getHtmlFragment(clipboardHtml);
string imageSrc = parseImageSrc(htmlFragment);

MessageBox.Show(imageSrc);
}

string parseImageSrc(string html)
{
return Regex.Match(html, @"<img.*?src=[""'](.*?)[""'].*>", RegexOptions.IgnoreCase | RegexOptions.Singleline).Groups[1].Value;
}

string getHtmlFragment(string clipboardHtml)
{
int fragStartPos = int.Parse(Regex.Match(clipboardHtml, @"^StartFragment:(\d+)", RegexOptions.Multiline).Groups[1].Value);
int fragEndPos = int.Parse(Regex.Match(clipboardHtml, @"^EndFragment:(\d+)", RegexOptions.Multiline).Groups[1].Value);

return clipboardHtml.Substring(fragStartPos, fragEndPos - fragStartPos);
}

re: Dragging and dropping an Image Url from Internet Explorer?
by Rick Strahl July 19, 2006 @ 2:57 am

Hi Duncan, thanks for the hint on the HTML Format. The Fox documentation I was using didn't show that format but it works. Along the same lines RTF Formatting also works.

Using HTML Format seems to work although it's a bit more work to get the right URL out of there as you need to adjust the URL to be fully qualified, not just the relative path that is usually returned.

This points me in the right direction though!