Hello Community,
I was wondering if there is a way to to use the webbrowser to download a file silently without the download file dialog coming up. What i want is to use Browser.Navigate("Download Path") and i don't want the file dialog to show up i want it to just download the file to a path of my choice (eg. My.Settings.Path).
Please Help...
I do not kown if it is possible to force a silent browser download, but .Net provides many ways to download files if you know the source address.
Two simple ones to use:
Yer i tried them but for some reason they wont let me download the file i can only download the file using the webbrowser for some reason note the download like is from an ip could that be why it won't work? eg. http://1.2.3.4/THEN_THE_FILENAME_IS_HERE
The form of the Url does not matter.
When you say "it won't let me download" what do you mean. Does it: throw an error, or the downloaded file is not what you want (appears corrupted) or is it something else?
Like when I use webclient it just says it's finished downloading but than when I use the downloaded file it says error.
That's what I figured. If you open the file with Notepad, you will probably see that it contains Html code. Two possible causes of this are that the adress you have is not the true download link or that site requires cookies to authenticate the download.
I have not found a solution to the first one. All that can be done is capture the Navigating event and print out the "e.url" property in the event and look through the results. There will probably be several Urls printed out,
If you do have that right link but need to supply cookies, I created an extended WebClient class to retrieve the cookies.
Imports System.Runtime.InteropServices
Public Class WebClientwithCookies
Inherits Net.WebClient
Private mycookies As New Net.CookieContainer()
Public Shadows Sub DownloadFile(ByVal url As String, ByVal filename As String)
mycookies.SetCookies(New Uri(url), GetCookies(url))
MyBase.DownloadFile(url, filename)
End Sub
Public Shadows Sub DownloadFile(ByVal url As Uri, ByVal filename As String)
mycookies.SetCookies(url, GetCookies(url.ToString))
MyBase.DownloadFile(url, filename)
End Sub
Protected Overrides Function GetWebRequest(ByVal address As Uri) As Net.WebRequest
Dim request As Net.WebRequest = MyBase.GetWebRequest(address)
If request.GetType() Is GetType(Net.HttpWebRequest) Then
CType(request, Net.HttpWebRequest).CookieContainer = mycookies
End If
Return request
End Function
Public Enum CookieError
ERROR_NO_MORE_ITEMS = 259
ERROR_INSUFFICIENT_BUFFER = 122
ERROR_INVALID_PARAMETER = 87
End Enum
<DllImport("wininet.dll", SetLastError:=True)> _
Public Shared Function InternetGetCookie(ByVal url As String, _
ByVal cookieName As String, _
ByVal cookieData As System.Text.StringBuilder, _
ByRef size As Int32) As Boolean
End Function
Public Shared Function GetCookies(ByVal uri As String) As String
Dim datasize As Int32 = 1024
Dim cookieData As New System.Text.StringBuilder(CInt(datasize))
Do
If InternetGetCookie(uri, Nothing, cookieData, datasize) Then
If cookieData.Length > 0 Then
Return cookieData.ToString().Replace(";"c, ","c)
Else
Return ""
End If
Else
'check if error code
Select Case Marshal.GetLastWin32Error
Case CookieError.ERROR_INSUFFICIENT_BUFFER
datasize += datasize
cookieData = New System.Text.StringBuilder(CInt(datasize))
Case CookieError.ERROR_INVALID_PARAMETER
Throw New ArgumentException("Inv alid parameter in GetCookies")
Case CookieError.ERROR_NO_MORE_ITEMS
Return ""
Case Else
Throw New Exception("Error in GetCookies, err code =" & Marshal.GetLastWin32Error.ToString)
End Select
Return Nothing
End If
Loop
End Function
End Class
Example usage:
Dim wc As New WebClientwithCookies()
wc.DownloadFile ("Your Url", "FileName.Ext")
wc.Dispose()
Still not working and yes i do have the direct link to the file.
It just starts with an ip (eg. http://1.2.3.4:5678/ Directory / Filename . Extension)
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