Getting MSDN help urls for .NET BCL types and Members

re: Getting MSDN help urls for .NET BCL types and Members

DontBotherMeWithSpam — Sat, 31 Dec 2005 05:24:35 GMT

I have thought creating a similar function which will retrieve MSDN2 link(but not through modifying command member definition). But will MSDN2 always have the same naming scheme later on? That was what I have been afraid of... but not that it matters much :)

re: Getting MSDN help urls for .NET BCL types and Members

Monad Team — Sat, 31 Dec 2005 07:06:10 GMT

You could also register a ScriptMethod MSDN in a TYPES.MSHXML file to show the documentation in a viewer:

<Type>
<Name>System.Object</Name>
<Members>
<ScriptMethod>
<Name>MSDN</Name>
<Script>
if ($global:MSDNViewer -eq $null)
{ $global:MSDNViewer = new-object -ComObject InternetExplorer.Application
}
$global:MSDNViewer.Navigate2("http://msdn2.microsoft.com/library/" + $this.GetType().FullName + ".ASPX")
$global:MSDNViewer.Visible = $TRUE
</Script>
</ScriptMethod>
</Members>
</Type>

Then you could do something like:
[Appdomain]::CurrentDomain.MSDN()

Jeffrey P. Snover [MSFT]

re: Getting MSDN help urls for .NET BCL types and Members

kfarmer — Sat, 31 Dec 2005 11:48:00 GMT

Now if only MSDN would provide a way for vendors to register base URLs for strong-named assemblies, this could be extended to non-MS types...

re: Getting MSDN help urls for .NET BCL types and Members

Monad Team — Sat, 31 Dec 2005 20:36:06 GMT

> Now if only MSDN would provide a way for vendors to register base
> URLs for strong-named assemblies, this could be extended to
> non-MS types

Right. In lieu of that happening, the scriptMethod could do a one time load of some metadata which mapped REGEXs against the full typename to URL-maker strings (think: $URLMAKER -f $this.GetType().FullName ) where $URLMAKER for MSDN would be:
"http://msdn2.microsoft.com/library/{0}.ASPX"

Jeffrey P. Snover [MSFT]

re: Getting MSDN help urls for .NET BCL types and Members

kfarmer — Sat, 31 Dec 2005 21:07:25 GMT

Yup.. and if there were some standard web service contract for retrieving the information, we wouldn't need to launch in a browser -- we could merely format the information as appropriate to the display.

Loving Mush - I mean Monad

ComputerZen.com - Scott Hanselman — Thu, 23 Mar 2006 11:47:12 GMT