Download: UrlCleaner C# source code and executables (xp32/64 net3.5 vs2008/vs2010): Download v1.4 executable- 1.0 MB Download v1.4 source - 3.5 MB See related program Visual Studio Cleaner.

UrlCleaner is a (URL) Uniform Resource Locator shortcut Cleaner.

A URL shortcut is a file created when you drag a webpage URL to your desktop. Since I frequently switch browsers, I have avoided the complexity of using each browser's 'bookmark' or 'favorites' management system. Instead, I just drag the webpage address bar from my browser to the desktop and it creates a URL shortcut file. Later, I can click on URL shortcut and it reopens the page using the current default browser. If I switch my default browser, the URL shortcuts all switch to using the new default browser. You can organize your URL shortcuts, just like regular files by creating folders and drag and dropping them to move them around.

Example showing how to create a URL shortcut with Chrome browser

1. Specify one or more directory Paths to search. Multiple directories are separated by a semicolon. Press Path button to browse directories or enter the directories directly into the path text box.
2. Press Scan to locate your URL files. As files are found they are added to the main list.
   If you wish to restrict the search, press the gear button to define your valid URL patterns.
3. Once you have a list of URL shortcut files, you can either press Verify All or select one or more rows and press Verify Selected. You can also double click on a row.

   Verification can be slow depending on your network speed and the website speed the URL points to. Verification is accomplished by:

   1. Validating the URL is well-formed
   2. Validating the URL host name (dns lookup)
   3. Loading the URL using C# builtin web-browser
   The Status column shows Done if successful loading one or more resources, else the reason for the failure. Success is marked by drawing the row's background color in light green and failure in light red. Good and Bad URL rows are counted and appear in the Information bar.

4. Once the verification completes or you press Abort button, you can sort the list to group by path, URL or status. Any failed verifications will automatically set the checkbox. You can select and drag the rows to File Explorer to move the URLs to a new folder. Click on a row to update the Information bar to see large copies of the icons and to update the status line at the bottom with the URL and Status information.
5. If you press the Delete button, all Checked rows will be deleted, causing their associated URL shortcut to be sent to the recycle bin. If you think you made a mistake, go to your Recycle Bin and restore the URL shortcut files.
6. In addition to deleting broken URL shortcuts, you can save valid URL web-icons to disk as either an icon or png image. Click on the row in the list to select the URL shortcut you wish to update. If you press the Set To Icon button, the web image will be saved to your local disk and the URL shortcut updated to use that image as its presentation image. Similarly, you press Set To Web button to set the URL shortcut to directly reference the URL's web image as its presentation image. Set To Image is more reliable because the image is saved locally on your computer. Set To Web requires periodic access to the web by Windows File Explorer (explorer.exe) to fetch the image from the network resource. In both cases, Windows has a private cache of icons and it can be tricky to get it to rebuild the cache after you reset the icon using either of the two buttons. See notes below on Windows Iconcache.db.

If you press the gear button, the Options dialog will appear. Here you define text patterns in the URL string. There is a column for URLs to Include and Excludee. I recommend you exclude URLs which point directly to a data file. If you don't exclude these links, everytime you Verify the URL, it will download another copy of the resource.

    The type name 'OAKListView' does not exist in the type 'UrlCleaner.UrlCleaner'
    

    Before:
      this.urlListView = new UrlCleaner.OAKListView();

    After:
      this.urlListView = new OAKListView();
    

Example of Visual Studio Compiler Error. Resolve by deleting "UrlCleaner." in front of OAKListView. Visual Studio will randomly replace this namespace so it is a constant battle to fix it.

1. Saving a 32bit Icon

2. Extract Icon Associated with Webpage

I love to use the ListView container, but it does not have a built-in column sorter. Sorting is handle by setting ListView's sorter to your own sort method. My ListView column sort method is in the ListViewColumnSorter.cs file.

To use the sort you:

  1. Make sure ListView HeaderStyle is Clickable, which is the default.
  2. Create and assign an ImageList to the SmallImageList resource of the ListView.
  3. Add Arrow images to ImageList
  4. Assign instance of sorter to your ListView.

  urlListView.ListViewItemSorter = new ListViewColumnSorter(ListViewColumnSorter.SortDataType.eAuto);

This implementation of ColumnSort will allow two columns to define the sort order. As you click a column it becomes the primary sort column and any previous sort column becomes the secondary sort if the first column has a duplicate.

/// <summary>
/// Column header click fires sort.
/// Supports two tier sorting.
/// </summary>
private void ColumnSort_Click(object sender, ColumnClickEventArgs e)
{
    bool isControl = System.Windows.Forms.Control.ModifierKeys == Keys.Control;

    ListView listView = sender as ListView;
    ListViewColumnSorter sorter = listView.ListViewItemSorter as ListViewColumnSorter;
    if (sorter == null)
        return;

    // Determine if clicked column is already the column that is being sorted.
    if (e.Column == sorter.SortColumn1)
    {
        // Reverse the current sort direction for this column.
        if (sorter.Order1 == SortOrder.Ascending)
            sorter.Order1 = SortOrder.Descending;
        else
            sorter.Order1 = SortOrder.Ascending;
    }
    else
    {
        // Set the column number that is to be sorted; default to ascending.
        sorter.SortColumn2 = sorter.SortColumn1;
        sorter.Order2 = sorter.Order1;
        sorter.SortColumn1 = e.Column;
        sorter.Order1 = SortOrder.Ascending;
    }

    // Clear old arrows and set new arrow
    foreach (ColumnHeader colHdr in listView.Columns)
        colHdr.ImageIndex = 4;

    if (sorter.SortColumn1 != sorter.SortColumn2)
        listView.Columns[sorter.SortColumn2].ImageIndex = (sorter.Order2 == SortOrder.Ascending) ? 2 : 3;

    listView.Columns[sorter.SortColumn1].ImageIndex = (sorter.Order1 == SortOrder.Ascending) ? 0 : 1;

    sorter.SortCheckedState = (isControl && sorter.SortColumn1 == 0);

    sorter.SortType =
        (listView.Columns[sorter.SortColumn1].TextAlign == HorizontalAlignment.Right) ?
        ListViewColumnSorter.SortDataType.eNumeric :
        ListViewColumnSorter.SortDataType.eAlpha;

    // Perform the sort with these new sort options.
    if (listView != null)
        listView.Sort();
}

/// <summary>
/// Play a sound.  Ignore play if recently played.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="sounds"></param>
private void PlaySound(Sounds sounds)
{
    if (!this.m_mute)
    {
        this.m_sndPlayer.Stream = Properties.Resources.bad;
        switch (sounds)
        {
            case Sounds.eAbort:
            case Sounds.eFail:
                this.m_sndPlayer.Stream = Properties.Resources.bad;
                break;
            case Sounds.eGood:
                this.m_sndPlayer.Stream = Properties.Resources.good;
                break;
        }

        if ((DateTime.Now - m_lastPlay).Duration().TotalSeconds > 2)
        {
            this.m_sndPlayer.Play();
            m_lastPlay = DateTime.Now;
        }
    }
}        

If you have a lot of URL Shortcuts, it is handy if you can search the list and find a specific object. I created a basic Find Dialog which should pop-up if you type Control-F thou it seems to be a little lazy to open sometimes.

Here is the logic which opens the Find Dialog:

private void UrlCleaner_KeyUp(object sender, KeyEventArgs e)
{
    switch (e.KeyCode)
    {
        case Keys.F:    // Launch Find dialog in response to control-f.
            if (e.Control)
                findMenu_Click(sender, EventArgs.Empty);
            break;
        case Keys.F3:
            Find(urlListView, findInfo, new FindDialog.FindEventArgs() { action = FindDialog.FindEventArgs.Action.Next });
            break;
    }
}

Here are all of the Find methods which manage the search logic:

private void findMenu_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    findDialog.GetArgs.action = FindDialog.FindEventArgs.Action.First;
    findDialog.Show();
}

private void findAgainMenu_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    findDialog.GetArgs.action = FindDialog.FindEventArgs.Action.First;
    if (findDialog.GetArgs.toFind.Length == 0)
        findDialog.Show();
    else
        findDialog_findEventHandler(null, findDialog.GetArgs);
}

void findDialog_findEventHandler(object sender, FindDialog.FindEventArgs e)
{
    Find(this.urlListView, findInfo, e);
}

void Find(ListView listView, FindInfo findInfo, FindDialog.FindEventArgs e)
{
    if (e.action == FindDialog.FindEventArgs.Action.First)
    {
        listView.SelectedIndices.Clear();
        findInfo.index = -1;
    }
    else if (e.action == FindDialog.FindEventArgs.Action.All)
    {
        listView.SelectedIndices.Clear();
        findInfo.index = -1;
        while ((findInfo.index = FindMatch(this.urlListView, e, findInfo.index)) != -1)
        {
            listView.EnsureVisible(findInfo.index);
            listView.SelectedIndices.Add(findInfo.index);
        }

        if (listView.SelectedIndices.Count != 0)
            PlaySound(Sounds.eGood);
        else
            PlaySound(Sounds.eFail);

        return;
    }

    // Search ListView.
    findInfo.index = FindMatch(this.urlListView, e, findInfo.index);
    if (findInfo.index == -1)
    {
        MessageBox.Show("No Match for:" + e.toFind);
        PlaySound(Sounds.eFail);
    }
    else
    {
        PlaySound(Sounds.eGood);
        listView.EnsureVisible(findInfo.index);
        listView.SelectedIndices.Add(findInfo.index);
    }
}

public static bool Contains(string source, string toCheck, bool isMatchCase, bool isRegularExpression)
{
    if (isRegularExpression)
        return Regex.IsMatch(source, toCheck, isMatchCase ? RegexOptions.None : RegexOptions.IgnoreCase);
    else
        return source.IndexOf(toCheck, isMatchCase ? StringComparison.Ordinal : StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase) >= 0;
}


/// Find a match, starting search just after previous match.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="listView"></param>
/// <param name="e"></param>
/// <param name="prevIndex"></param>
/// <returns>Matching row index or -1 on failure</returns>
int FindMatch(ListView listView, FindDialog.FindEventArgs e, int prevIndex)
{
    int index = prevIndex;
    while (++index < listView.Items.Count)
    {
        ListViewItem lvItem = listView.Items[index];
        for (int colIdx = 0; colIdx != lvItem.SubItems.Count; colIdx++)
        {
            if (lvItem.SubItems[colIdx] != null && 
                Contains(lvItem.SubItems[colIdx].Text, e.toFind, e.isMatchCase, e.isRegularExpression))
                return index;
        }
    }

    return -1;
}