Start WPF application from link in browser?

Question

We have a requirement to start a WPF application with specific parameters from a link in a browser.

We are wondering if this is possible?

As an alternative could we embed the web application in a WPF browser control, and read the values out of the html web page?

Answer 1

Several possibilities :

• if you control the browser (i.e. if you are in an intranet scenario, and have the opportunity to deploy applications), you can :
  • create an activex or plugin that runs the application
  • register a new uri scheme to interpret the url of kind "yourapplication://yourarguments"
  • (complex): deploy a listening app ran under the user session, and from the webapplication, ask this listening app to run the target application
  • reduce the security of the browser (not recommended)

• if you don't control the browser:

  • create a clickonce application... this involves a setup, but which does not require admin privilege

• Moving to Silverlight also might be an option, depending on your needs. SilverLigth V5 (still in beta) notably adds the ability for an admin to control the rights of the application via a GPO

Note: My feelings is the later option (Silverlight) is far more preferable because it's a lot more cleaner and less security hole factor. However, it can only be done if your requirements fits into the SL features