Question

Basically, I just need to write a simple java program to detect the version of my locally installed Internet Explorer.

There’s javascript code, but it runs within your browser. what I want is some code like this:

public class VersionTest
{
   public static void main(String[] args)
   {    System.out.println("you IE Version is:" + getIEVersion());
   }

   public static String getIEVersion()
   {   //implementation that goes out and find the version of my locally installed IE
   }
}

How do I do that? Thanks

Answer 1

you can use Internet Explorer Registry Entry for version. You can execute Reg Query from java using Runtime class. Reg Query is a command line tool to query registry entries in windows.

Process p = Runtime.getRuntime().exec("reg query \"HKLM\\Software\\Microsoft\\Internet Explorer\" /v Version");

Complete code:

ArrayList<String> output = new ArrayList<String>()
Process p = Runtime.getRuntime().exec("reg query \"HKLM\\Software\\Microsoft\\Internet Explorer\" /v Version");
BufferedReader stdInput = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(p.getInputStream()),8*1024);
BufferedReader stdError = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(p.getErrorStream()))
String s = null;
System.out.println("Here is the standard output of the command:\n");
while ((s = stdInput.readLine()) != null)
output.add(s)

String internet_explorer_value = (output.get(2));
String version = internet_explorer_value.trim().split("   ")[2];
System.out.println(version);

Output = 9.0.8112.16421

Output of reg query on my command prompt

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer

Version REG_SZ 9.0.8112.16421