Developers

Omnis Technical Note TNWE0008

Opening the Browser at a specific item using a URL

For Omnis Studio Web Client

Introduction

The example library that this technical note refers to will demonstrate how you can click on a URL, for example within an email and open the browser at a specific location. This is ideal for order tracking. Omnis could generate an email that contains the URL with the customer order reference. The user can click on the URL and be taken to details of their specific order.

Two methods are demonstrated, firstly, opening a simple HTML page with the requested details and secondly, opening an activeX page.

How to use the Library

Enclosed is an example that shows how to handle the URL call. You can generate the email using Omnis, this is described elsewhere.

You will need to update the information in the method "return_activex" with your webserver settings and on the URL links below.

To show a simple HTML page reply, create a URL link:

http://199.199.199.255/cgi-bin/nph-omniscgi.exe?OmnisLibrary=RETHTML
&OmnisClass=rtTask&OmnisServer=5112&OrderNo=100&ShowForm=0

To show an activeX page create a URL link:

http://199.199.199.255/cgi-bin/nph-omniscgi.exe?OmnisLibrary=RETHTML
&OmnisClass=rtTask&OmnisServer=5112&OrderNo=100&ShowForm=1

The example works as follows:
rtTask is called with URL parameters. Based on the ShowForm parameter, a simple html page is returned or html content containing the activeX is returned. In the later case, an extra parameter is added to the form, so when the form is constructed, it knows what to display. At no point are html pages created on the webserver. This is all dynamic content.

When using the activeX link, it only returns html code for the activeX control. You could return the same content that template.html has (Omnis/html folder). This will show either an activeX or Netscape plugin based on browser.

note: This example cannot be locally tested due to the way the URL works - in other words the URL needs to be able to call a real running webserver with the cgi-bin/nph-omniscgi.exe or other omnisapi dlls installed.

Download the library and document - tnwe0008.zip