launchy

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DESCRIPTION

Launchy is helper class for launching cross-platform applications in a fire and forget manner.

There are application concepts (browser, email client, etc) that are common across all platforms, and they may be launched differently on each platform. Launchy is here to make a common approach to launching external application from within ruby programs.

FEATURES

Currently only launching a browser is supported.

SYNOPSIS

You can use launchy on the commandline, within the Capybara and Rspec-rails testing environment, or via its API.

Commandline

% launchy http://www.ruby-lang.org/

There are additional commandline options, use launchy --help to see them.

Using the BROWSER environment variable

Launchy has a predefined set of common browsers on each platform that it attempts to use, and of course it is not exhaustive. As a fallbabck you can make use of the somewhat standard BROWSER environment variable.

BROWSER works in a similar same way as PATH. It is a colon (:) separated list of commands to try. You can also put in a %s in the command and the URL you are attempting to open will be substituded there.

As an example if you set BROWSER=/usr/local/bin/firefox-bin -new-tab '%s':/usr/local/bin/google-chrome-stable and you call Launchy.open("http://www.ruby-lang.org/") then Launchy will try, in order:

• /usr/local/bin/firefox-bin -new-tab 'http://www.ruby-lang.org'
• /usr/local/bin/google-chrome-stable http://www.ruby-lang.org

Additional links on the use of BROWSER as an environment variable.

• http://www.catb.org/esr/BROWSER/index.html
• https://help.ubuntu.com/community/EnvironmentVariables
• https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/environment_variables

Capybara Testing

First, install Capybara and Rspec for Rails. Capybara provides the following method:

save_and_open_page

When inserted into your code at the place where you would like to open your program, and when rspec is run, Capybara displays this message:

Page saved to /home/code/my_app_name/tmp/capybara/capybara-current-date-and-time.html with save_and_open_page.
Please install the launchy gem to open page automatically.

With Launchy installed, when rspec is run again, it will launch an unstyled instance of the specific page. It can be especially useful when debugging errors in integration tests. For example:

context "signin" do
  it "lets a user sign in" do
    visit root_path
    click_link signin_path
    save_and_open_page
    page.should have_content "Enter your login information"
  end
end

Public API

In the vein of Semantic Versioning, this is the sole supported public API.

Launchy.open( uri, options = {} ) { |exception| }

At the moment, the only available options are:

:debug        Turn on debugging output
:application  Explicitly state what application class is going to be used
:host_os      Explicitly state what host operating system to pretend to be
:ruby_engine  Explicitly state what ruby engine to pretend to be under
:dry_run      Do nothing and print the command that would be executed on $stdout

If Launchy.open is invoked with a block, then no exception will be thrown, and the block will be called with the parameters passed to #open along with the exception that was raised.

An example of using the public API:

Launchy.open( "http://www.ruby-lang.org" )

An example of using the public API and using the error block:

uri = "http://www.ruby-lang.org"
Launchy.open( uri ) do |exception|
  puts "Attempted to open #{uri} and failed because #{exception}"
end

UPGRADING from versions before 2.0.0

The previously published version of Launchy before the 2.0.0 series was 0.4.0. There have been so many changes, and a mistaken tag at 1.0.0, that I have decided to bump all the way to 2.x.y.

I have attempted to keep backward compatibility with the previous examples. The previous API examples of:

Launchy::Browser.run("http://www.ruby-lang.org/")

and

Launchy::Browser.new.visit("http://www.ruby-lang.org/")

will still work, and you will get a deprecation notice, along with the line of code you should probably update. For example, this is what would print out in the github gem if it was updated to use 2.0.x but not use the supported API.

% gh home
WARNING: You made a call to a deprecated Launchy API. This call should be changed to 'Launchy.open( uri )'
WARNING: I think I was able to find the location that needs to be fixed. Please go look at:
WARNING:
WARNING: /Users/jeremy/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.8.7-p334/gems/github-0.6.2/lib/commands/helpers.rb:275:in `open'
WARNING: helper :open do |url|
WARNING:   has_launchy? proc {
WARNING:     Launchy::Browser.new.visit url
WARNING:   }
WARNING: end
WARNING:
WARNING: If this is not the case, please file a bug. Please file a bug at https://github.com/copiousfreetime/launchy/issues/new

These deprecation notices will go away with version 3.0 and the only available API will be the documented one.

ISC LICENSE

http://opensource.org/licenses/isc-license.txt

Copyright (c) 2007-2013 Jeremy Hinegardner

Permission to use, copy, modify, and/or distribute this software for any purpose with or without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above copyright notice and this permission notice appear in all copies.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND THE AUTHOR DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES WITH REGARD TO THIS SOFTWARE INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR ANY SPECIAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION, ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE.