▼ |  | Net: PLT Networking Libraries

1 | URLs and HTTP
2 | URI Codec: Encoding and Decoding URIs
3 | FTP: Client Downloading
4 | Send URL: Opening a Web Browser
5 | SMTP: Sending E-Mail
6 | sendmail: Sending E-Mail
7 | Headers: Parsing and Constructing
8 | IMAP: Reading Mail
9 | POP3: Reading Mail
10 | MIME: Decoding Internet Data
11 | Base 64: Encoding and Decoding
12 | Quoted-Printable: Encoding and Decoding
13 | DNS: Domain Name Service Queries
14 | NNTP: Newsgroup Protocol
15 | TCP: Unit and Signature
16 | TCP Redirect: tcp^ via Channels
17 | SSL Unit: tcp^ via SSL
18 | CGI Scripts
19 | Cookie: HTTP Client Storage
| Bibliography
| Index

On this page:

send-url
send-url/ file
send-url/ contents
external-browser
browser-preference?
unix-browser-list

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### 4`` Send URL: Opening a Web Browser

(require net/sendurl)

Provides send-url for opening a URL in the user’s chosen web browser.

See also browser/external, which requires scheme/gui, but can prompt the user for a browser if no browser preference is set.

(send-url |  | str |  |  |  |
| [ | separate-window? |  |  |  |
|  | #:escape escape?]) |  | → |  | void?

str : string?
separate-window? : any/c = #t
escape? : any/c = #t

Opens str, which represents a URL, in a platform-specific manner. For some platforms and configurations, the separate-window? parameter determines if the browser creates a new window to display the URL or not.

Under Windows, send-url normally uses shell-execute to launch a browser. (If the URL appears to contain a fragment, it may use an intermediate redirecting file due to a bug in IE7.)

Under Mac OS X, send-url runs osascript to start the user’s chosen browser.

Under Unix, send-url uses the value of the external-browser parameter to select a browser.

The url string is usually escaped to avoid dangerous shell characters (quotations, dollar signs, backslashes, and non-ASCII). Note that it is a good idea to encode URLs before passing them to this function. Also note that the encoding is meant to make the URL work in shell quotes: URLs can still hold characters like #, ?, and &, so the external-browser should use quotations.

(send-url/file |  | path |  |  |  |
| [ | separate-window? |  |  |  |
|  | #:fragment fragment |  |  |  |
|  | #:query query]) |  | → |  | void?

path : path-string?
separate-window? : any/c = #t
fragment : (or/c string? false/c) = #f
query : (or/c string? false/c) = #f

Similar to send-url, but accepts a path to a file to be displayed by the browser. Use this function when you want to display a local file: it takes care of the peculiarities of constructing the correct file:// URL, and uses send-url to display the file. If you need to use an anchor fragment or a query string, use the corresponding keyword arguments.

(send-url/contents |  | contents |  |  |  |
| [ | separate-window? |  |  |  |
|  | #:fragment fragment |  |  |  |
|  | #:query query |  |  |  |
|  | #:delete-at seconds]) |  | → |  | void?

contents : string?
separate-window? : any/c = #t
fragment : (or/c string? false/c) = #f
query : (or/c string? false/c) = #f
seconds : (or/c number? false/c) = #f

Similar to send-url/file, but it consumes the contents of a page to show, and displayes it from a temporary file.

If delete-at is a number, the temporary file is removed after this many seconds. The deletion happens in a thread, so if mzscheme exits before that it will not happen – when this function is called it scans old generated files (this happens randomly, not on every call) and removes them to avoid cluttering the temporary directory. If delete-at is #f, no delayed deletion happens, but old temporary files are still deleted as described above.

(external-browser) → browser-preference?
(external-browser cmd) → void?
cmd : browser-preference?

A parameter that, under Unix, determines the browser started send-url.

The parameter is initialized to the value of the 'external-browser preference.

The parameter value can be any of the symbols in unix-browser-list, #f to indicate that the preference is unset, or a pair of strings. If the preference is unset, send-url uses the first of the browsers from unix-browser-list for which the executable is found. If the parameter is a pair of strings, then a command line is constructed by concatenating in order the first string, the URL string, and the second string.

If the preferred or default browser can’t be launched, send-url fails. See get-preference and put-preferences for details on setting preferences.

(browser-preference? a) → boolean?
a : any/c

Returns #t if v is a valid browser preference, #f otherwise. See external-browser for more information.

unix-browser-list : (listof symbol?)

A list of symbols representing Unix executable names that may be tried in order by send-url. The send-url function internally includes information on how to launch each executable with a URL.
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