Creating Internet Shortcuts

Environment: VC6 SP2, 95/98/NT

This article shows you how to create an Internet shortcut for Windows 95, 98, and NT
computers. Creating internet shortcut is little different than the general shortcut, so
the code for Internet shortcut creation is shown.

Before you see the code, you should understand the variables I’m using:
pszURL – url location e.g ‘http://www.sample.com/index/html’ Note: You can use a syntax such as file://Arguments for
local files.
pszURLFileName – shortcut filename, should have extension of .url otherwise
does not work. e.g ;"C:test.url"
LPCSTR szDescription – description of the shortcut
LPCTSTR szIconFile – icon file(could any .exe ot .dll)
int index – index of the icon resource in above .exe or .dll

HRESULT CreateInterShortcut (LPCSTR pszURL, LPCSTR pszURLfilename,
	LPCSTR szDescription,LPCTSTR szIconFile = NULL,int nIndex = -1)
{
 HRESULT hres;

 CoInitialize(NULL);

 IUniformResourceLocator *pHook;

 hres = CoCreateInstance (CLSID_InternetShortcut, NULL, CLSCTX_INPROC_SERVER,
  IID_IUniformResourceLocator, (void **)&pHook);

 if (SUCCEEDED (hres))
 {
  IPersistFile *ppf;
  IShellLink *psl;

  // Query IShellLink for the IPersistFile interface for
  hres = pHook->QueryInterface (IID_IPersistFile, (void **)&ppf);
  hres = pHook->QueryInterface (IID_IShellLink, (void **)&psl);

  if (SUCCEEDED (hres))
  {
   WORD wsz [MAX_PATH]; // buffer for Unicode string

   // Set the path to the shortcut target.
   pHook->SetURL(pszURL,0);

   hres = psl->SetIconLocation(szIconFile,nIndex);

   if (SUCCEEDED (hres))
   {
    // Set the description of the shortcut.
    hres = psl->SetDescription (szDescription);

    if (SUCCEEDED (hres))
    {
     // Ensure that the string consists of ANSI characters.
     MultiByteToWideChar (CP_ACP, 0, pszURLfilename, -1, wsz, MAX_PATH);

     // Save the shortcut via the IPersistFile::Save member function.
     hres = ppf->Save (wsz, TRUE);
    }
   }

   // Release the pointer to IPersistFile.
   ppf->Release ();
   psl->Release ();
  }

  // Release the pointer to IShellLink.
  pHook->Release ();

 }
 return hres;
}

Downloads

Download function source code – 1 Kb