Connect the Gmail with IWebBrowser2

Dofu

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Jun 17, 2004

1 min read

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Use the IWebBrowser2 to connect Gmail

Introduction

When I got a Gmail account, I must do many complex steps to login the Gmail system. I think if there is an interface like POP#, people will feel more free to use the GMail system.

I do not know of a GMail Client API, so I use the IE COM interface to manage IE to do what we do manually.

There are many articles about IE programming, but I cannot find one code to do a page that includes frames or IFrame. In this article, I resolved this problem.

First, We can use get_frames to get the frame collection. If the page does not have the <body> tag, the frame collection will include all the framesets. Otherwise, the frame collection includes all the iframes. In the Gmail system login page,there is a iframe tag, and we can find it and get the form.

BOOL CGMailClass::lunchBrowser()
{
    HRESULT hr1 ;
    hr1 = CoInitialize(NULL);
    if(!SUCCEEDED(hr1))
        return FALSE;

    //Create an Instance of web browser
    hr1 = CoCreateInstance (CLSID_InternetExplorer, NULL, 
        CLSCTX_LOCAL_SERVER, 
        IID_IWebBrowser2, (LPVOID *)&m_pBrowser); 
    if(hr1==S_OK)
    {
        VARIANT_BOOL pBool=true; //The browser is invisible
        m_pBrowser->put_Visible( pBool ) ; 
        //Gmail login page
        COleVariant vaURL("https://gmail.google.com/gmail") ; 
        COleVariant null; 

        //Open the mail login page
        m_pBrowser->Navigate2(vaURL,null,null,null,null) ; 
        WaitForEnd();
    }
    return TRUE;
}

m_pBrowser is the member variable of this class, below is the declaration:

protected:
    IWebBrowser2* m_pBrowser;

The function below is to get the document from the IFrame, so that we can find the form element.

BOOL CGMailClass::getDoc(IHTMLDocument2** pIFrameDoc)
{
    IDispatch *spDispatch;
    CComQIPtr pDoc2;
    if (m_pBrowser){
        spDispatch=NULL;
        if (SUCCEEDED(m_pBrowser->get_Document( &spDispatch)))
            pDoc2 = spDispatch;
        if(pDoc2!=NULL)
        {
            //because the Gmail login page hide in a Iframe
            //so we must find where is the IFrame object
            CComPtr pIFrameCol;
            if (SUCCEEDED(pDoc2->get_frames(&pIFrameCol))) 
            {
                //retreive all of the Frames
                long p=0;
                pIFrameCol->get_length(&p);
                if(p!=0)
                { //yes we find more than one Frames
                    for(long i=0;i<=(p-1);i++)
                    { 
                        VARIANT frameRequested;
                        VARIANT frameOut;
                        frameRequested.vt = VT_I4 ;
                        frameRequested.bstrVal = (BSTR)i;
                        pIFrameCol->item(&frameRequested, &frameOut);
                        IHTMLWindow2* pIFrameWindow;
                        frameOut.pdispVal->QueryInterface(IID_IHTMLWindow2, 
                                                      (void**)&pIFrameWindow);

                    pIFrameWindow->get_document(pIFrameDoc);
                        return TRUE;
                        //ParseDoc(pIFrameDoc);
                    }
                }
            }
        }
    }
    return FALSE;
}

The getForm function can get the Form element and you can use the form element to set the input value,visible and other properties.

BOOL CGMailClass::getForm(IHTMLDocument2 *pIFrameDoc,
                          IHTMLFormElement **pFormElement)
{
    IHTMLElementCollection* pElementCol=NULL;
    long p=0;
    if (SUCCEEDED(pIFrameDoc->get_forms(&pElementCol)))
    {

    if(SUCCEEDED(pElementCol->get_length(&p)))
            if(p!=0)
            { 
                for(long i=0;i<=(p-1);i++)
                {
                    VARIANT id, index;
                    IDispatch* spDispatch=NULL;
                    V_VT(&id) = VT_I4;
                    V_I4(&id) = i;
                    V_VT(&index) = VT_I4;
                    V_I4(&index) = 0;
                    spDispatch=NULL;
                    if(SUCCEEDED(pElementCol->item(id,index, &spDispatch)))
                    {
                        if(SUCCEEDED(spDispatch->QueryInterface(
                                 IID_IHTMLFormElement,(void**)pFormElement)))
                            return TRUE;
                    }
                }
            }
    }
    return FALSE;
}

In this demo, I just implented the login function, because the Gmail system uses too many and too complicated javascript. I cannot find a way to get the inbox property. If you had a good method,please let me know. You can reach me at mailto:ChineseDofu@gmail.com

I must say thanks to pratheesh because of his Yahoo Mail.