how to link to an external file in sandcastle

Question

I am using sandcastle and I have an external file that I want to provide a link to with a relative path. I have found an example that uses javascript to accomplish this, but the example doesn't work for me and I can't find any other way to setup a link to an external file of a CHM file using a relative path. Here is the example I tried that doesn't work for me... I am simply pointing to another help file that I want to be loaded. I need to do this rather than merging them various reasons.

          <externalLink>
            <linkText>Test</linkText>
            <linkAlternateText>Test</linkAlternateText>
            <linkUri>
              javascript:
              var thePage = unescape(window.location.href);
              var start = thePage.indexOf(':\\') - 1;
              var length = thePage.lastIndexOf('.chm') - start;
              thePage = thePage.substr(start,length);
              length = thePage.lastIndexOf('\\') + 1;
              thePage = thePage.substr(0, length);
              window.location.href = thePage + '../../Test.Doc/Help/Test.Doc.chm';
            </linkUri>
          </externalLink>

Any help here would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks.

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Jun 21 '13 at 15:23

I needed to add a target node that re-targeted the link at the current help window as follows:

      <linkTarget>_self</linkTarget>

Full working example:

      <externalLink>
        <linkText>Test</linkText>
        <linkAlternateText>Test</linkAlternateText>
        <linkUri>
          javascript:
          var thePage = unescape(window.location.href);
          var start = thePage.indexOf(':\\') - 1;
          var length = thePage.lastIndexOf('.chm') - start;
          thePage = thePage.substr(start,length);
          length = thePage.lastIndexOf('\\') + 1;
          thePage = thePage.substr(0, length);
          window.location.href = thePage + '../../Test.Doc/Help/Test.Doc.chm';
        </linkUri>
        <linkTarget>_self</linkTarget>
      </externalLink>

After adding that it worked fine... you get a pop-up notification to download/open the file, and it works from there. Would be nice to just have it open, but at the very least this works.

how to link to an external file in sandcastle

1 Answers1