Problem creating a shorcut

[Wolfgang Draxinger]

Mike Driscoll wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I've had this niggling issue from time to time. I want to
> create a shortcut on the user's desktop to a website that
> specifically loads Firefox even if Firefox is not the default
> browser.
> 
> I usually use COM as it allows very specific settings of the
> shortcut, such as the Working Directory and the Target Path.
> However, the following will not work for some reason:
> 
> <code>
> 
> import win32com.client
> import winshell
> 
> shell = win32com.client.Dispatch('WScript.Shell')
> userDesktop = winshell.desktop()
> 
> shortcut = shell.CreateShortCut(userDesktop +
> '\\MyShortcut.lnk') shortcut.Targetpath = r'"C:\Program
> Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe"
> https:\www.myCompanyWebsite.com\auth\preauth.php'
> shortcut.WorkingDirectory = r'C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox'
> shortcut.save()
> 
> </code>
> 
> This creates the following target path (which doesn't work):
> 
> "C:\"C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" https:
> \www.myCompanyWebsite.com\auth\preauth.php"
> 
> If I leave the website off, it works. If I leave the path to
> Firefox out, it works too. Is there another method I can use
> other than creating the shortcut by hand and using the shutil
> module?
> 
> Thank you for any ideas.

I see four problems:

1) you should not hardcode the backslashes ('\'), instead use
os.sep for it.

2) In URIs there are no backslashes, only forward slashes. You
coded

https:\...

which is _WRONG_. URIs are <protocoll>://<host>/<resource>, where
for some protocolls <host> is empty (file protocoll e.g.).

3) You assume, that Firefox is always installed at C:\Program
Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe
However the path largely differs from system to system. On *nix
systems you normally have all programs in $PATH, so a non full
qualified path would be sufficient. On Windows this works, too,
_IF_ the installation directory of the to be used application
get's added to the PATH environment variable.

Wolfgang Draxinger
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