FOUND! how to attach to running instances of Internet Explorer

[gcash]

Most folks know you can start up an instance of Internet Explorer by
saying "x=win32com.client.Dispatch('InternetExplorer.Application.1')"
and you get a WIN32 object with a "Document" object that has arrays of
"Link"/"Form"/"Frame" subobjects, and methods like "Navigate" where
you can force the IE instance to browse to a new URL.

What folks would like to do is to connect to an already running
version of explorer, and this isn't so obvious.

The MS KB article you usually find is 176792 which mentions using
SHDocVw.ShellWindows to iterate through the instances.  However Mark
Hammond sayes this is a "vtable interface" (whatever that is) and "not
supported by python" in
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&newwindow=1&safe=off&selm=3D106564.4040602%40pretection.com

HA! well, I happened to discover you can do:

import win32com.client
# look in the makepy output for IE for the "CLSIDToClassMap"
# dictionary, and find the entry for "ShellWindows"
clsid='{9BA05972-F6A8-11CF-A442-00A0C90A8F39}'
ShellWindows=win32com.client.Dispatch(clsid)
for i in range(ShellWindows.Count):
    print i
    # this is the titlebar value
    print ShellWindows[i].LocationName
    # this is the current URL
    print ShellWindows[i].LocationURL
    print

and the object returned by ShellWindows[n] is the exact same as the
one returned by Dispatch('InternetExplorer.Application.1')

I'm posting this here for future generations of Googlers.

So I'm running Win2K Pro... and I'm curious about what versions this
works under.  I'm pretty sure you have to have IE 5.0 or newer, but
could folks try this code on 95/98 and tell me (gcash-at-cfl.rr.com)
if it works??

Also, I haven't been able to determine if there's a better name of the
form 'InternetExplorer.Application.1' instead of using the horrid
class-id.  How do you do that?  The makepy output for explorer doesn't
list one.

Thanks to Mark Hammond for win32all, it is a true work of art, and is
teaching an old UNIX hack lots of Windows stuff.

-gc

-- 
I've never tried emacs because I already _have_ an OS on this peecee.
-- mikea at mikea.ath.cx (Mike Andrews)