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Difference between revisions of "Activity:OpenExternal (Activity)"


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| int|| TimeOut|| In || Time out value in seconds (optional, to wait for a maximum amount of time for the invoked process to finish). Leaving this value empty or setting it to 0 means that the workflow continues execution immediately, otherwise the specified amount of seconds will be spent waiting for the process to finish.
 
| int|| TimeOut|| In || Time out value in seconds (optional, to wait for a maximum amount of time for the invoked process to finish). Leaving this value empty or setting it to 0 means that the workflow continues execution immediately, otherwise the specified amount of seconds will be spent waiting for the process to finish.
 
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|- align="left"
| Result|| int|| Out || 1 if process successfully finished, 0 if not
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| Result|| bool|| Out || true if process successfully finished, false if not
 
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Revision as of 08:57, 13 November 2014

Open External
Name OpenExternal
Purpose Open an external document or executable file
Category UBIK File Primitives
Returns success of opening the file
Version 2.4+

The OpenExternal Activity opens an external document or executable file combined with optional arguments.

Arguments

Argument Type Direction Purpose
string FileName In The path to the executable file or the document file.
string Arguments In Additional arguments to use (optional, used to pass arguments for executable files).
string WorkingDirectory In Working directory (optional, used to specify a working directory for executable files). This value only has effect together with executable files.
int TimeOut In Time out value in seconds (optional, to wait for a maximum amount of time for the invoked process to finish). Leaving this value empty or setting it to 0 means that the workflow continues execution immediately, otherwise the specified amount of seconds will be spent waiting for the process to finish.
Result bool Out true if process successfully finished, false if not

Usage

This activity is used to open file documents or executable files during the execution of a workflow. This activity can be used for showing documents like Excel files, JPG Pictures etc. It can also be used to execute a batch file if needed.

IC Attention.pngThis activity does not automatically save changes. If you want to persist the newly created instance, you need i.e. a subsequent SaveObject activity!

Example

Show the Excel file E:\Results.xlsx:

Argument Value
string FileName "E:\Results.xlsx"

Example

Show the graphics image file E:\Graph.jpg with a certain image viewer application that allows to pass the additional command line argument "/clipcopy" which copies the loaded picture to the clipboard. Therefore, the needed arguments are simply separated by space characters, consisting of the image file path and the additional argument.

Argument Value
string FileName ""C:\Program Files (x86)\IrfanView\i_view32.exe""
string Arguments "E:\Graph.jpg /clipcopy"

Example

Alternatively to the previous example, showing the image E:\Graph.jpg with it's system default application can simply be done by specifying it's document path as the file name.

Argument Value
string FileName "E:\Graph.jpg"

Example

Another use case could be executing batch files. We have a batch file E:\ProcessData.bat that processes the data of the text file MyData.csv in the working directory "E:\". If there is a problem we want to specify a timeout of 30 seconds for this processing step to avoid blocking the workflow for a long time.

This can be done by defining the following arguments:

Argument Value
string FileName "E:\ProcessData.bat"
string Arguments "E:\MyData.csv"
string WorkingDirectory "E:\"
string TimeOut 30

See also