A url that's not a url

**Zippy** · 26 July 2010, 21:19

Originally posted by meridian View Post

I need to be able to create a url that is not a url. Basically, a redirect but not in .url or .lnk format.

For urls to mms/wmv files I can use a .wvx file as a media redirector. Anyone know of anything similar for regular http destinations?

Not that I know of. http is the scheme - which is part of the definition of a url. I don't thnk I know what you are getting at really, so could you elaborate further?

**meridian** · 27 July 2010, 07:06

Originally posted by Zippy View Post

Not that I know of. http is the scheme - which is part of the definition of a url. I don't thnk I know what you are getting at really, so could you elaborate further?

Sure. I have a web app file upload system, to which I would like to upload both files and links to other files that already exist on the server and web.

Url uploads work fine with the app in IE7, but only urls to documents or web pages. Urls to multimedia content fail at the upload stage with a "file not found" error. A workaround for the multimedia content is to encase the mms path to the wmv file in the wvx file. It's a txt file with something similar to the following:
<asx version = "3.0">
<entry>
<ref href="mms://vod.test.com/vod/CMR/test_file.wmv"/>
</entry>
</asx>
and then saved as .wvx. This .wvx file then acts as a url file - I double-click it and the media opens as expected.

I have a slightly different problem with W2K/IE6, where even http urls fail to upload correctly - the error message received is "The above file name is invalid." Basically, it's this problem. As a workaround, I'd like to encapsulate the url similarly to the multimedia in a redirect file that still acts as a url - in other words, to be able to upload it as a different extension but still be able to double-click it and be taken to the server file or web location.

A url that's not a url