openfin-examples-external-application-launching

Tutorial: Launch External Process

Overview

OpenFin allows developers to package native applications along with their web based applications. In this tutorial, you’ll launch a co-deployed .exe with the OpenFin Javascript API.

Assumptions

• Windows Only (this repo packages an .exe)

Features

• Packaging an executable as an asset in your application manifest
• Launching the asset from your OpenFin Application
• Listen to lifecycle events on the executable

Launch

Installer

OpenFin Installer

Run Locally

npm install
npm start

Getting Started

Native assets are include as appAssets in your Application Manifest.

  "appAssets": [
    {
      "src": "http://localhost:9966/assets/dist.zip",
      "alias": "pdftohtml-alias",
      "target": "pdftohtml.exe",
      "version": "0.0.1"
    }
  ]

See In Source

• src Path to a hosted .zip containing the executable
• alias Name to use when invoking the .exe
• target .exe contained in the .zip file
• version asset version number. Updating the version number will tell your application to fetch a new version of the asset.

In this repo, the executable is launched using the input from the app as an argument. Optionally, you can include an args field in your appAsset object which will be passed along when invoking.

After including the asset, you can launch using the fin.desktop.System.launchExternalProcess call. See In Source

API Documentation

.launchExternalProcess

Disclaimers

This is a starter example and intended to demonstrate to app providers a sample of how to approach an implementation.

License

By downloading OpenFin, you agree to the terms of our Developer License.

Support

Please enter an issue in the repo for any questions or problems.

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