UrlCombineW function (shlwapi.h)

Article
02/09/2023

When provided with a relative URL and its base, returns a URL in canonical form.

Syntax

LWSTDAPI UrlCombineW(
  [in]            PCWSTR pszBase,
  [in]            PCWSTR pszRelative,
  [out, optional] PWSTR  pszCombined,
  [in, out]       DWORD  *pcchCombined,
                  DWORD  dwFlags
);

Parameters

[in] pszBase

Type: PCTSTR

A pointer to a null-terminated string of maximum length INTERNET_MAX_URL_LENGTH that contains the base URL.

[in] pszRelative

Type: PCTSTR

A pointer to a null-terminated string of maximum length INTERNET_MAX_URL_LENGTH that contains the relative URL.

[out, optional] pszCombined

Type: PTSTR

A pointer to a buffer that, when this function returns successfully, receives a null-terminated string that contains the combined URL.

[in, out] pcchCombined

Type: DWORD*

A pointer to a value that, on entry, is set to the number of characters in the pszCombined buffer. When the function returns successfully, the value depends on whether the function is successful or returns E_POINTER. For other return values, the value of this parameter is meaningless.

dwFlags

Type: DWORD

Flags that specify how the URL is converted to canonical form. The following flags can be combined.

URL_DONT_SIMPLIFY (0x08000000)

Treat '/./' and '/../' in a URL string as literal characters, not as shorthand for navigation. See Remarks for further discussion.

URL_ESCAPE_PERCENT (0x00001000)

Convert any occurrence of '%' to its escape sequence.

URL_ESCAPE_SPACES_ONLY (0x04000000)

Replace only spaces with escape sequences. This flag takes precedence over URL_ESCAPE_UNSAFE, but does not apply to opaque URLs.

URL_ESCAPE_UNSAFE (0x20000000)

Replace unsafe characters with their escape sequences. Unsafe characters are those characters that may be altered during transport across the Internet, and include the (<, >, ", #, {, }, |, , ^, ~, [, ], and ') characters. This flag applies to all URLs, including opaque URLs.

URL_NO_META

Defined to be the same as URL_DONT_SIMPLIFY.

URL_PLUGGABLE_PROTOCOL (0x40000000)

Combine URLs with client-defined pluggable protocols, according to the W3C specification. This flag does not apply to standard protocols such as ftp, http, gopher, and so on. If this flag is set, UrlCombine does not simplify URLs, so there is no need to also set URL_DONT_SIMPLIFY.

URL_UNESCAPE (0x10000000)

Un-escape any escape sequences that the URLs contain, with two exceptions. The escape sequences for '?' and '#' are not un-escaped. If one of the URL_ESCAPE_XXX flags is also set, the two URLs are first un-escaped, then combined, then escaped.

URL_ESCAPE_AS_UTF8 (0x00040000)

Windows 7 and later. Percent-encode all non-ASCII characters as their UTF-8 equivalents.

Return value

Type: HRESULT

Returns standard COM error codes, including the following.

Return code	Description
S_OK	pszCombined points to a string that contains the combined URLs. The value of pcchCombined is set to the number of characters in the string, not counting the terminating NULL character.
E_POINTER	The buffer was too small. The value of pcchCombined is set to the minimum number of characters that the buffer must be able to contain, including the terminating NULL character.

Remarks

Items between slashes are treated as hierarchical identifiers; the last item specifies the document itself. You must enter a slash (/) after the document name to append more items; otherwise, UrlCombine exchanges one document for another. For example:


hRetVal = UrlCombine(TEXT("http://xyz/test/abc"), 
                     TEXT("bar"), 
                     lpszCombined, 
                     &dwLength, 0);

The preceding code returns the URL http://xyz/test/bar. If you want the combined URL to be http://xyz/test/abc/bar, use the following call to UrlCombine.


hRetVal = UrlCombine(TEXT("http://xyz/test/abc/"), 
                     TEXT("bar"), 
                     lpszCombined, 
                     &dwLength, 0);

If a URL string contains '/../' or '/./', UrlCombine usually treats the characters as if they indicated navigation in the URL hierarchy. The function simplifies the URLs before combining them. For instance, "/hello/cruel/../world" is simplified to "/hello/world". If the URL_DONT_SIMPLIFY flag is set in dwFlags, the function does not simplify URLs. In this case, "/hello/cruel/../world" is left as it is.

Note

The shlwapi.h header defines UrlCombine as an alias that automatically selects the ANSI or Unicode version of this function based on the definition of the UNICODE preprocessor constant. Mixing usage of the encoding-neutral alias with code that is not encoding-neutral can lead to mismatches that result in compilation or runtime errors. For more information, see Conventions for Function Prototypes.

Requirements

Requirement	Value
Minimum supported client	Windows 2000 Professional, Windows XP [desktop apps only]
Minimum supported server	Windows 2000 Server [desktop apps only]
Target Platform	Windows
Header	shlwapi.h
Library	Shlwapi.lib
DLL	Shlwapi.dll (version 5.0 or later)

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