Question

I have a different links in my page like,

<a href="../test.url">Open</a>

now when I click on this link, i get a *.url file in text mode.
I found that URL files has different formats as http://www.cyanwerks.com/file-format-url.html
show is there any easy way to fetch the target path from this text?

I know it is just simple string manipulation but is there any easy way to parse it which can work for cross-platform URL shortcut files?

Answer 1

As you can see that URL file having same format as .ini file (key/value pair).
http://www.cyanwerks.com/file-format-url.html

If you are running your application in Desktop Application then, the files can be manipulated using basic file I\O or the GetPrivateProfileString, GetPrivateProfileSection, WritePrivateProfileSection, WritePrivateProfileSring API functions provided by Windows.

If you want to manually parse it and you having whole file content as one string only then i prefer you to follow below method:

private String getUrl(String fileContent) {
    fileContent = fileContent.trim();
    String[] contentList = fileContent.split("\r\n");
    for (String content : contentList) {
        if (content.toUpperCase().startsWith("URL")) {
            int i = content.indexOf("=");
            return content.substring(i + 1);
        }
    }

}