Windows Programming > creating web browser easily in c with mingw gcc dev cplusplus



This resoruce is specific to MingW-GCC users only.

Your firewall software might start reporting your executable as as spyware (becuase browsers connect to internet), so better is compile project yourself and execute it, rather than executing precompiled exe file.

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Ther have been hundreds of requests in MingWMailing list as well as few have reported bugs, which were not actually bugs, those were linker errors and complaints of missing declarations in headers that are dispatches with MingW. Most of the reporting parties were Dev C++ users.

Now when MingW has almsot all the required headers and libraries, we can easily create our web browser within another window and enjoy creating our first web browser in simple C style syntax. Comparing MSVC that already has CWebBrowser, that makes life easier, what are MignW usr going to do, ofcourse they mostly end-up linking thirdparty DLL files explicitely or implicitely, and still cant get their program standalone.

Ok, come to the porint. The ZIP package provided here includes a Dev C++ projec ready to compile, as well as a precompiled library file that was created using Resource of Jeff Glatt provided at codeproject.com, which helped alot getting this library ready. It is very lightweight and small library that can directly be linked to your applciation.

The library Includes a header file, that you need to include.

So, the steps for creating your fist browser window are:
1. Create a Dialog
2. Call function CreateBrowserWindow and pass it the handle of the dialog
3. Open a website in teh browser control, by calling function OpenURL this way:

OpenURL(myDialogHandle, "http://www.apitalk.com");

4. Finally - destry the browser when your application termiantes by calling DestroyBrowserWindow

Furthermore you can get the browser HEND handle through function GetBrowserHandle

That's it.

Now grab the Dev C++ project files from here:
http://www.apitalk.com/files/webbrowser-mingw-gcc-decpp.zip

Make user you have following link libraries options in linker tab of project: -loleaut32 -lole32 -luuid

Project includes:

Webbrowser.h - include file    libwebbrowser.a - static link library    Main.c - demo program    WebBrowser.exe - demo binary    WebBrowser.dev - DEV C++ project file

Webbrowser.h

//input is parent window / dialog handle long CreateBrowserWindow(HWND); //input is parent window / dialog handle void DestroyBrowserWindow(HWND); //Retrieve HWND handle of Browser - input is parent window / dialog handle HWND GetBrowserHandle(HWND); //Open desired url - 1st argument is parent window handle, 2nd is URL long OpenURL(HWND, const char *);

Main.c

#include <windows.h> #include "WebBrowser.h" LRESULT CALLBACK myProc(HWND, UINT, WPARAM, LPARAM); int APIENTRY WinMain(HINSTANCE a, HINSTANCE b, LPSTR c, int sh){ OleInitialize(NULL); HWND myDialog = CreateWindowEx( 0,WC_DIALOG, "APITalk.com - Embed IE in C", WS_OVERLAPPEDWINDOW | WS_VISIBLE, 100,100,1000,600,NULL,NULL,NULL,NULL ); SetWindowLong(myDialog, DWL_DLGPROC, (long)myProc); CreateBrowserWindow(myDialog); //--------- CREATE BROWSER OpenURL(myDialog, "http://localhost/speak+/index.php"); MSG msg; while(GetMessage(&msg,NULL,0,0)) { TranslateMessage(&msg); DispatchMessage(&msg); } OleUninitialize(); return 0; } //////////////// Dialog's callback procedure LRESULT CALLBACK myProc(HWND hwnd, UINT uMsg, WPARAM wParam, LPARAM lParam) { if (uMsg == WM_CLOSE){ DestroyBrowserWindow(hwnd); //--------- DESTROY BROWSER PostQuitMessage(0); } if (uMsg == WM_SIZE) { HWND browser = GetBrowserHandle(hwnd); if(browser) { //resize it so that it fits the parent window MoveWindow(browser,0,0,LOWORD(lParam),HIWORD(lParam),TRUE); UpdateWindow(hwnd); } } return 0; }