Update: @ShayLevy suggested a one-liner @ http://twitter.com/ShayLevy/statuses/7945284388 and that one-liner is (New-Object -com Shell.Application).Open(http://www.microsoft.com). Nice..! I did not think about this. LL: Always look around for better ways 
Update: The method I had posted earlier is meaningless since we can open a URL using start-Process or just start. Refer to the comments below.
While experimenting with one of my PowerShell libraries, I thought it would be a good idea to be able to open a URL from a cmdlet or script or even command line. However, I did not want to hard code any browser details (path/image name/etc) in the script. The idea is to find out the default browser setting and then invoke the default browser process to open the URL supplied. So, I came up with this simple script that does the job.
Function Invoke-URL {
param ([string]$url)
#Get the default Browser path
New-PSDrive -Name HKCR -PSProvider registry -Root Hkey_Classes_Root | Out-Null
$browserPath = ((Get-ItemProperty 'HKCR:\http\shell\open\command').'(default)').Split('"')[1]
#Start the browser path with $url as an argument
Start-Process $browserPath -ArgumentList $url
}
What we do here is
-
Look at HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\http\Shell\Open\Command\(default) value to find out what is the default browser path
-
Start a browser process using Start-Process cmdlet
Here is a simple example to demonstrate use of this
Invoke-URL (Get-Command Invoke-Item).helpuri
Above command will open up the HELP URI for Invoke-Item in your default browser. I have tested this with Internet Explorer and Mozilla FireFox on Windows 7. I don’t see a reason why it would fail with other browsers being default browsers.
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
IMHO it’s too complicated, even the Shay’s solution. What works is just this:
Start-Process -FilePath ‘http://www.ravichaganti.com/blog/?p=1034′
Yes. It is. There are many alternatives and I did not think about all that before posting this function
To open an url I usually just use
start
which is an alias to
Start-Process
. I’m using PowerShell V2 of Windows 7.
Agree. I think I should take this post offline. It was a mistake on my side. I did not experiment with start-process before posting this here