Opening webpage in default browser with double-quotes (") inside url

Question

When I try to open any site that has double-quotes (") inside the link , for ex. user.php?name="stackoverflow" it just cuts " or sometimes it redirects me to Google!? Used code:

ShellExecute(0, 'open', PChar('open'), PChar(URL), nil, SW_SHOW) ;

Answer 1

You need use a fully qualified URL including the http:// and escape/encode the URL by replacing the double-quotes (") with %22.

Also you are passing wrong parameters.

See MSDN: Use ShellExecute to launch the default Web browser

Example:

procedure TForm1.Button1Click(Sender: TObject);
var
  URL: string;
begin
  URL := 'http://www.user.com/?name="stackoverflow"';
  URL := StringReplace(URL, '"', '%22', [rfReplaceAll]);
  ShellExecute(0, 'open', PChar(URL), nil, nil, SW_SHOWNORMAL);
end;

You should always encode the URL parameters, not only double-quotes. You can use Indy with TIdURI.URLEncode - IdURI unit.
You could also use HTTPEncode from the HTTPApp unit to encode each parameter in the URL.

Note that TIdURI.URLEncode will encode the ? and the & separators also. so I think it's a better idea to encode each parameter separately with HTTPEncode e.g:

URL := 'http://www.user.com/?param1=%s&param2=%s';
URL := Format(URL, [
  HTTPEncode('"stackoverflow.com"'),
  HTTPEncode('hello word!')]);
// output: http://www.user.com/?param1=%22stackoverflow.com%22&param2=hello+word!